From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot, #42)

Agatha Christie

Start date: December 1, 2020

Finish date: December 31, 2020

Discussion: Archive: Poirot Buddy Reads

Why we're reading this: Getting towards the end of our Poirot buddy reads.
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Archive: Poirot Buddy Reads

* Reading Order for the Unofficial Poirot Buddy Reads
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last updated Dec 27, 2020 08:20AM

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What Members Thought

Apr 03, 2018 Teri-K rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-golden-age

I really enjoyed this fun novel which features Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver, a feisty and scatterbrained mystery writer. Oliver is one of my favorite characters because she's fun and a little irascible and so very charming. In this book she decides to visit one of those awful Author's Teas she's always getting invited too, and it turns out to be worse than she expected when she's buttonholed by a woman who insists she find out what really happened in a double suicide that took place years a ...more

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Mar 12, 2021 Grisette rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 3rd-pers-narration, my-kind-of-detective-thriller

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
3.6 stars

⏳ [Re-read project #9 of 2023, 1st proper review, rating maintained]

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🔹️ Number of death/s: 3
🔹️ Motive for the crime: Passion & Revenge
🔹️ Method of crime: Pushed over a cliff/Battery, Gunshot (Execution), Gunshot (Suicide)
🔹️ Main location: England
🔹️ Notable element: Another book, after the excellent Five Little Pigs, where Poirot's talent for sleuthering old crimes is highlighted with a different twist to the exercise; also the infamous Twin trope is used, again with a n

3.6 stars

⏳ [Re-read project #9 of 2023, 1st proper review, rating maintained]

==================

🔹️ Number of death/s: 3
🔹️ Motive for the crime: Passion & Revenge
🔹️ Method of crime: Pushed over a cliff/Battery, Gunshot (Execution), Gunshot (Suicide)
🔹️ Main location: England
🔹️ Notable element: Another book, after the excellent Five Little Pigs, where Poirot's talent for sleuthering old crimes is highlighted with a different twist to the exercise; also the infamous Twin trope is used, again with a neat twist.
🔹️ Book type: Novel, H. Poirot
🔹️ Reference to SH: SH is mentioned and his dog 😆

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My sentiment for this book was always one of a very intelligent but sad plot. This 2023 re-read reconfirms it. Overall, this book was a beautifully sad tragedy of love and twisted love. Very reminiscent of Five Little Pigs, inspiring me similar melancholy. However, I found the delivery of the story a bit lacking.

The concept itself, of trying to solve a crime many years after the fact, remains very alluring and the solution to the puzzle very neat. I liked that AC tried a different angle from Five Little Pigs, in that the information gathered were more gossips and hearsay from people around but not close to the victims (rather than direct witnesses, albeit confounded ones, in Five Little Pigs) and Poirot, as well as the reader, has to wade through all these to locate the grains of truth within. And in doing so, AC introduced very rightly the concepts of 'curiosity', 'memory' (re: the eponymous elephants) and 'truth'. However, and I am uncertain if it was on purpose (to dissert on these 3 concepts) or a lack of stricter editing, at many parts of the book conversations tended to spin in endless and maddening cycle of the same things - forever rehashed. It had the effect of leadening the whole story for me.

Also, Mrs Oliver bothered me a lot in this book. I have never been a big fan of hers, but the way she kept being an unreliable narrator unnerved me. She kept giving the impression that she vaguely knew the Ravencrofts in later life but yet she was able to go meet a lot of people that somehow she just knew had links with the Ravencrofts. That bit where she met their previous housekeeper just killed me at how contrived it was; she seemed to intimately know the housekeeper, her daughter, where they lived, in which years she served the Ravencrofts... and yet Mrs Oliver still claimed she barely knew the married Ravencrofts? And the bit where she mis-remembered what Julia Carstairs said, plain irritated me. I really can't decide whether AC wanted to exhibit the pitfalls of 'memory' and third person accounts, or if it was plain lazy editing. And while I liked how the 'twin' element was incorporated into the puzzle solution, I am a bit resentful on how Mrs Oliver omitted that big fact all along, and we readers only found out from the policeman's recounting. It felt so underhanded, no matter how airheaded the character is supposed to be!

What saves the book for me was really the tragic story of the Ravenscroft family and the insertion of identical twins' psychology. It was really a beautiful drama, very powerful emotionally.

P.S. I still prefer the book plot (minus the re-hashing parts) than the bizarre twist brought into the ITV adapdation (i.e. the vengeful cousin). That said, I always wondered on what happened to Dolly's remaining child and why no one seemed curious to know what happened to her. Hence, I guess the ITV version tried to answer this but there was really no need to detract from the original material that much!

#readchristie2023, Fall from a Height ...more

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May 22, 2013 Laura Anne rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, british-isles

Old sins have long shadows. After about 75 pages trying to decide if they should investigate, Poirot & Mrs Oliver look into a cold case concerning the murders and/or suicides of a married couple. Unlike Five Little Pigs-in which each character had a distinctive voice & unique perspective- the interviewees (elephants, as Mrs Oliver dubs them) give hazy, meandering, repetitive* recollections; one of Dame Christie's weakest books.

*Someone rattled off, "whether her mother had killed her father, or w ...more

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Jul 25, 2020 Bev rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, silver-age-mystery, mystery, agatha-christie

see review other edition

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Feb 21, 2018 Jinx rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-harder-2018

Was originally assigned this book in grade 5 for a book report; it was my first introduction to Agatha Christie. This was probably not the best place to start with her. It took me years to pick up another one of her novels. Unfortunately this re-read did not improve my impression. I still did not like this mystery.

1 like · Like · see review