Bereft of the three people she has held most dear, Cecilia must decide if she has the strength to come to terms with the past.
My Review:
I think what I like most about Agatha Christie's works as Mary Westmacott is the character development. In her murder mysteries, everything moves so fast there isn't much opportunity to really get to know and understand the characters. Unfinished Portrait has a lot of similarities with Giant's Bread.
Unfinished Portrait is Celia's life story. However, the narrator who is an injured painter trying a new medium (writing stories), points out in the prologue that it's such a common story that it could be any one's story.
The story opens with Celia at a seaside resort getting ready to commit suicide.
Celia had a happy childhood. She lived on a beautiful country estate and was loved and adored by her mother, father and grandmother and teased by her older brother. Her father has a heart attack and dies when she's eleven years old, and from then on she and her mother live very modestly. At this point, her brother, who is several years older than her, has already left home to join the army.
Celia grows up and marries Dermot despite her mother's fears that he can't be trusted and her grandmother's general warnings about the fickleness of men. Celia and Dermot are happy for 11 years. During that time, Celia gives birth to their daughter, Judy and Dermot gets a good job that affords them a life of luxury. When Celia's mother dies, things quickly spiral out of control, and she finds herself without all the people who matter the most to her.
As I was reading this novel, I kept thinking about how Celia is a version of Nell, and Dermot a version of Vernon from Giant's Bread. It's like they couldn't be together in that story, so the author tries them out under different circumstance in this novel. Unfortunately, the results are just as disastrous.
Unfinished Portrait really made me think about the different types of people that make the world go around.
4/5
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