Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

#8 in series.
Will I read other installments? Yes; it's on my committed list.
Comparison to others in series: Better.

I knew the ending because this is a story that has been around for a while.

Perhaps based on the real life of an actress from the 1940s.

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sunny_not's review

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adventurous dark mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This was an interesting read. The storyline was different from her other books and even though I guessed the murderer pretty early on it was still quite intriguing since I wanted to know why she was killed.

Marina Gregg made perfect sense imo, since she was super fixated on the word child early on so I guessed that she killed heather because of something related to children I just didn't know exactly what.

however there were some misogynistic lines in this book and it was overall quite ableist.

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midwifekt's review against another edition

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mrkdk's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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exlibrissum's review

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dark mysterious fast-paced

3.5

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readingthroughthelists's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side is an odd mystery. Really, it doesn’t feel like a mystery as much as it does a case-study of a vivacious actress, as well as a meditation on the passage of time and the inevitability of change. Perhaps this is characteristic of the Miss Marple novels--it’s been a long time since I read them.

In fact, it was the “case study” of Marina Gregg that I remembered the most: the description of her failed adoptions to soothe the maternal longing, the shock and horror of having born a “mentally deficient” child, the realization that the person responsible for her suffering was standing right in front of her, boasting about her deed, the sudden desire to pay back for the pain she suffered. All this I remembered well, and it is done well.

However, while Marina Gregg is a compelling character, she is not an innocent one. She is not the Lady of Shalott, despite the repeated (and rather forced) comparison made again and again. (And why the Lady of Shalott? I guess because Marina Gregg can’t stop “looking in the mirror” to relive her doom over and over? Because she can never be happy where she is, just like the Lady of Shalott cannot resist looking down at Lancelot and invoking a curse on herself? I guess?)

But the Lady of Shalott never murdered anyone, and Marina Gregg has, so I don’t understand Miss Marple’s attitude of “the poor woman has suffered enough.” Not only is Marina Gregg a murderer, she was also a terrible mother, abandoning three children she adopted as pets before also abandoning her handicapped child because he didn’t live up to her expectations for maternal bliss. Also, she apparently forgot her first husband to such an extent she can’t even recognize him when he’s standing in front of her (more on that later). And did I mention she killed three people?

While the sketch of Marina Gregg is good, the mystery is less so. It takes a long time for the action to get going and there’s a great deal of information that gets repeated over and over in the early chapters, with nothing new added. A few of the later twists also feel bizarre or unexplained. Who was Ella Zelinski blackmailing, exactly? (Miss Marple said she “guessed” but what was the chain of events that led her to that guess?) How did the butler find out that Marina was guilty? Did Marina shoot him, or was that her husband?

The craziest twist, however, is the reveal that Arthur Badcock is Marina Gregg’s first husband. Do you mean to tell me that that man stood right in front of her and SHE DIDN’T RECOGNIZE HIM? Not even a little? And that he married a woman who liked to go on and on about meeting Marina Gregg and he never once mentioned to her that he used to be married to Marina?

In conclusion, a fairly good character study about a tragic but selfish woman, and a pretty mediocre mystery.

3 stars.

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