Our Year Of Agatha Christie Covers: 5: Postern Of Fate
So we move into month two, with whatever a hastily cobbled together google search can find me. And can we spell the word Austerity (ans. yes, after a quick spellcheck). There is something awesomely dull about this Christie cover for Postern Of Fate, in the same way there is something awesomely dull about the phrase “Postern of Fate”.
Dull in colours perhaps, but not dull in composition. One of the scariest things I ever came across as a cosseted suburban child was the wild flaring nostrils of a horse in a local farm. Horses on TV seem so tame, even the wild stallions* who starred in Black Beauty and Champion the Wonder Horse. Ambulatory devices at best, even when they were stars they seemed like just modes of transport, cowboy cars. So when I ended up in the farm field with some fearless bigger boys, I was shocked to see the true madness in a horses eyes, and these flaming, flaring nostrils.
Shetland Ponies eh?
I believe this might be a Marple, correspondents will I am sure correct me. But the key question is, does this cover make you want to buy this book. Initially no, would be my gut reaction, it looks old, it looks a bit scary but it also is muted and grey. But the details reveal themselves (the repeated magnified little girl / doll in the background). I’m guessing seventies by the minor hyperbole on the strap line, but again willing to be enlightened.
*WYLD STALLYNS!
Pete Baran in FT /The Brown Wedge • Art/Books • 837 views
I think this cover is effectively creepy! Rub title tho. They’ve managed to make the horse look halfway between paint peeling on an old rocking horse and a vaguely rotting actual horse – ugh but effective. I know nothing about the book but is this her wanting to make you think a murder mystery is in fact a ghost story?
the postern of fate book is REALLY ASTONISHINGLY BAD btw!
Turns out to be her last book, a Tommy and Tuppence vs the 1970′s! According to The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English, this novel is one of the “execrable last novels” where Christie “loses her grip altogether”.
does it have a “go-between” vibe to it, the cover really reminds me of that film
The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English OTM
My AlteRnative theorY: the cover’s Just anOther red herRing. Dame Agatha ofteN filleD her storIes with them. DoN’t get toO hung up on the deTail. In the novel Tuppence finDs an allegatIon of murder and a clue to the killer’s idENtity within the pAges of a children’s sTorybook. One’s enjoyment of the rest of the book rather depends on whether you enjoy a leisURely wallow in long monologues revealing AbsoLuteLY nothing.