Giant's Bread
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Mary Westmacott (pseudonym of Agatha Christie) |
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| Cover artist | Macadam |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Tragedy |
| Publisher | Collins |
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Publication date
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April 1930 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 448 pp |
| Preceded by | The Mysterious Mr Quin |
| Followed by | The Murder at the Vicarage |
Giant's Bread is a novel written by Agatha Christie and was first published in the UK by Collins in April 1930 and in the US by Doubleday later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $1.00. It is the first of six novels Christie published under the nom-de-plume Mary Westmacott.
The opening of London's National Opera House is celebrated by the performance of a new composition, The Giant. The audience was either puzzled or ecstatic about this modernist piece. One man who does not personally like the composition, but can see the genius that scored it, is Carl Bowerman, an elderly and distinguished music critic, who joins the owner of the Opera House, Sebastian Levinne, for a private drink. Despite the foreign nature of the music, Bowerman recognises that the composer, known as Boris Groen, must be English because "Nationality in music is unmistakable." He states that Groen is the natural successor to a man called Vernon Deyre who was killed in the war. Sebastian politely refuses to tell more about the absent Groen, saying "There are reasons..."
In the late years of the Victorian era, Vernon Deyre was a small boy growing up in the old country house of the Deyre family, Abbots Puisannts. He was the only child of Walter, a soldier by profession, and Myra Deyre who was something of an emotional and clinging person. Walter is a sad figure who is not in love with his wife and is subject to various dalliances. Vernon's nurse – an important figure in his childhood – raises him, but he has no friends. In their place he has four imaginary friends, the most important of whom is called Mr Green, a florid man who loves playing games and who lives in a wood that borders on the grounds of Abbots Puisannts.
One of the main male figures in Vernon's life is his Uncle Sydney, Myra's brother who is a self-made man who runs a manufacturing business in Birmingham and is someone with whom Vernon instinctively feels uncomfortable. Someone who promotes a different reaction is Walter's sister, Nina, an artistic woman who impresses Vernon by her playing of the grand piano in the house. This is an object for which Vernon has an unreasoning terror, naming it "The Beast", as it promotes a hatred of music in his soul.
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