Sing a Song of Sixpence by Agatha Christie

The Queen was in the parlor, eating bread an honey.

This month’s Agatha Christie short story pick, Sing a Song of Sixpence, turned out to be a bit of a letdown. Not bad, just...a little forgettable. It lacks the twisty, spellbinding flair we know Dame Agatha is more than capable of delivering. Instead, we get a rather subdued tale that meanders to an underwhelming conclusion. Maybe not featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, soured my overall enjoyment. 

The story follows Sir Edward Palliser, a retired criminologist whose quiet life is interrupted by a visit from an old flame. The most disturbing part of the whole story is that she was 17 years old when they were romantically involved while he much older. Yikes. Anyways, she wants him to investigate her wealthy aunt’s suspicious death, which the police have already chalked up as unsolvable. She's convinced one of her siblings is behind it, and Edward reluctantly agrees to step in, perhaps out of guilt or a long-forgotten sense of chivalry.

The mystery itself feels pretty thin and despite a somewhat promising setup, there’s very little tension or urgency. The resolution hinges on a conveniently remembered nursery rhyme, which feels a bit too neat and tidy for my liking. All in all, Sing a Song of Sixpence remains innocuous and it’s definitely not Christie at her best. Here's hoping next month's selections showcase Agatha Christie's talents in full force!

Ingots of Gold by Agatha Christie

Shiver me timbers.

I can hardly believe it’s already June. How is the year halfway over?! Time is zipping by way too fast for my liking. On the bright side, a new month means diving (pun intended) into more Agatha Christie short stories, thanks to the reading challenge hosted by Fanda ClassicLit.

This month's pick is Ingots of Gold from the Thirteen Problems collection, featuring the ever-delightful Miss Marple, even though it's more of a cameo appearance. In this story, it’s Raymond West’s turn to present a mystery to the detective club. If you need a refresher, Raymond is Miss Marple’s nephew and was the host of the club’s very first meeting. He shares a tale from his visit to a friend in Cornwall, a bold adventurer with a keen interest in uncovering sunken treasures. The big buzz in town? A large galleon that supposedly went down nearby, loaded with a massive haul of gold ingots has vanished! This has left many locals perplexed, including Raymond, since the gold was super heavy and nearly impossible to remove from the watery depths. Suspicion soon falls on a cantankerous and shady innkeeper who might be running a cove smuggling operation. Raymond also meets an inspector on the train to Cornwall who has been assigned to this case and as he spends more time in the village, it becomes more difficult to shake off the feeling of impending dread. Something sinister is going on here and Raymond soon finds himself unexpectedly involved with trying to help his friend track down the missing treasure. Toss in few other curious characters, a kidnapping gone awry, drop some red herrings and we’ve got ourselves a good ol’ fashioned Agatha Christie whodunnit mystery. 

True to form, Miss Marple listens quietly before cutting through the fluff with her trademark insight, especially when it comes to gardening. She also keenly points out Raymond’s flair for drama as a writer, which often clouds his judgment. Sometimes the simplest explanation really is the right one. 

While the big reveal at the end isn't particularly memorable, Christie’s storytelling is impeccable. Her ability to craft such a tightly woven mystery within such a compressed narrative space is quite impressive. The story is fast-paced with just enough intrigue to deliver that satisfying dopamine hit before you’re off to the next story.

A Harlem Tragedy by O. Henry

What happens to a dream deferred? 

A Harlem Tragedy by O. Henry has definitely not aged well and trying to take it seriously from a 21st-century perspective is almost impossible. It's a bizarre snapshot of the early 1900s, back when “real men” (read: Alpha males with questionable morals) showed their love by punching their wives in the face. Apparently, in this twisted logic, domestic violence was not only an expression of patriarchal control but also a romantic prelude to gift-giving. You know, just your classic “I hit you because I love you” kind of nonsense.

The plot centers around two married couples living in the same apartment building. The wives are friends, but one is jealous of the other. Not because her friend’s life is better, but because her husband routinely beats her up. Meanwhile, her own husband is a total bore who is more invested in reading the newspaper than giving her a shiner. She performs her domestic wifely duties of cooking and cleaning while he works all day. She becomes increasingly frustrated with their stagnant marriage, wishing that he would a real man and beat her senseless because then she’ll finally feel seen and loved.

The whole story is cringe-worthy and while the "twist ending" suggests that maybe it's supposed to be a satire about gender roles and masculinity, none of it landed for me. Moreover, since the story is set in Harlem, it raises another eyebrow: are these characters supposed to be black? It’s never made clear, but if they are, that would add another layer of clumsy, ignorant, tone-deaf storytelling to O. Henry’s résumé. This is a terrible, head-shaking, “what-did-I-just-read?” kind of mess. 

Save yourself the time and skip this one.

Eisenheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser

The Illusionist or the Prestige. Which do you prefer?

For a story packed with exposition and styled like a historical narrative, Eisenheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser somehow manages to stay utterly captivating from start to finish. Normally, that kind of heavy detail can bog down a short-story but in this case, it works pretty much flawlessly. Millhauser's brisk pacing keeps things moving at a steady clip with a constant sense of mystery and wonder swirling around Eisenheim, eastern Europe's most legendary illusionist at the dawn of the 20th century. 

Despite being written like a faux-biography, the story never comes across as a dull historical treatise. In fact, it embraces the illusion of truth so convincingly that you almost find yourself Googling whether Eisenheim was a real person. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t. That’s part of the story's magic though. Millhauser playfully blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that mirrors the very illusions Eisenheim performs. The result is a kind of literary sleight-of-hand that leaves you questioning art as illusory. 

The 2006 film adaptation, The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, often gets overlooked because it had the misfortune of coming out the same year as Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. At the time, I remember thinking The Illusionist was actually quite solid, even slightly underrated. The two films inevitably drew comparisons, but it never felt fair. Sure, they both feature magicians but also tell very different stories. The Prestige is a twisty rivalry thriller, while The Illusionist is more about mythmaking and the paradoxical nature of art as truth. 

Ultimately, Eisenheim the Illusionist is far more than a tale about a gifted magician at the height of his powers. Through Eisenheim’s spellbinding performances that seem to defy the laws of physics, the story explores how illusion can reveal deeper truths. Just as the magician manipulates human perception, Millhauser himself becomes a literary illusionist, constructing a narrative that plays with ambiguity, expectation, and the reader’s sense of what is real. In doing so, he invites us to consider that very good art is simialr to a magic trick, acting as both deception and revelation. This inherent paradox is what makes the story so haunting and enchanting at the same time, even after after the final curtain call.

The New Music by Donald Barthelme

Demeter and Persephone.

Even though I can appreciate Donald Barthelme's bold experimentation in The New Music, which consists entirely of dialogue, it's probably one of my least favorite short-stories by him. It mostly left me feeling confounded and frustrated, as if I had just listened to a jazz solo with every instrument playing a different song. 

Barthelme, true to his post-modernist roots, is all about breaking the rules of conventional storytelling. He loves to turn narrative expectations on their head, and staying true to the title, it's as if he's trying to compose a new kind of literary "music." But instead of a harmonious symphony, it often feels more like a chaotic jam session. If the goal was to disorient the reader and shake up traditional form, then mission accomplished.

The basic framework of the story is a conversation between two brothers. There's repetition, fragmented anecdotes, and plenty of nonsensical detours. At times it felt like eavesdropping on a conversation in a dream. And yes, there’s even a large sketch of a bird (I think it's a bird?) tossed into the mix, just to keep you guessing. Because, why not. 

One of the recurring threads in their conversation is the complex relationship with their mother, blending childhood trauma, myth, and themes of death and mortality. Heavy stuff buried beneath layers of absurdity and randomness. Perhaps a narrative logic does exist here but it eludes me.

Look, if you enjoy decoding literary puzzles and don’t mind wading through jangling narrative noise, you might get more out of this than I did. But for me? I felt like I was tuning into a radio station that never quite landed on a clear signal.

Here are a few quotes that stood out to me:

If one does nothing but listen to the new music, everything else drifts, goes away, frays. Did Odysseus feel this way when he and Diomedes decided to steal Athene’s statue from the Trojans, so that they would become dejected and lose the war? I don’t think so, but who is to know what effect the new music of that remote time had on its hearers?

To the curious: A man who was a Communist heard the new music, and now is not. Fernando the fish-seller was taught to read and write by the new music, and is now a leper, white as snow. William Friend was caught trying to sneak into the new music with a set of bongos concealed under his cloak, but was garroted with his own bicycle chain, just in time. Propp the philosopher, having dinner with the Holy Ghost, was told of the coming of the new music but also informed that he would not live to hear it.

The new music burns things together, like a welder. The new music says, life becomes more and more exciting as there is less and less time.

Barthelme leans hard into absurdity and irony to reflect how ideology, identity, and knowledge are rendered unstable or even meaningless in the face of this "new music" he is creating. It becomes a metaphor for radical change or innovation, something so all-consuming that it pulls focus from everything else. Barthelme layers in myth and historical detachment to show how even the most heroic or legendary moments feel uncertain and destabilized in the face of modern absurdity. It's both a playful and melancholy nod to the way meaning becomes obfuscated in the postmodern condition. This "new music" can also be viewed as metaphor for art, societal upheaval, and the way meaning slips through our fingers when we try to hold onto it too tightly. The author is not offering answers but rather, he’s reveling in the questions. I just don't care enough to ponder them.

The Captured Woman by Donald Barthelme

I'm cookin' steaks fah dinnah. I expect you to stay.

The Captured Woman is really weird, even by Donald Barthelme standards. Beneath its wry humor and fragmented style lies a dark critique of sexual stereotypes and the rigid roles imposed by heteronormative domestic life. At the center of the narrative is a bizarre premise: a group of men who kidnap women and form a support group to share "best practices" for emotional and psychological control. It sounds absurd, and it certainly fits that bill. The author uses this absurdity to provide some sharp commentary on how power operates within traditional gender dynamics.

In one particularly twisted moment, a man advises the narrator on how to win his captive’s affection with poetic manipulation: “Speak to her. Say this: My soul is soused, imparadised, imprisoned in my lady.” Barthelme is fond of wordplay, which shows up plenty here. Much to the man's initial annoyance, the narrator mixes up the order of imparadised and imprisoned, which changes the meaning: "No. Imparadised, imprisoned. It actually sounds better the way you said it, though. Imparadised last." The ironic reference to Milton's Paradise Lost is both comical and chilling where the poetic language of romantic devotion is used as a manipulative tool for control. The misogynistic relationship is anything but a paradise; rather, it's the complete opposite: hell. 

Who exactly holds the most power in this relationship? Something to ask yourself when reading this story. It largely revolves around performance and not just in the literal sense of role-playing, but in the performance of gender itself. The men adhere to a strange set of rituals and rules, playing out their roles as dominant figures while encouraging each other to adopt increasingly performative and contradictory behaviors. Meanwhile, the narrative voice constantly shifts. The "I" becomes "you" or turns into "we", blurring the boundaries of identity and authority. The result is a dizzying cacophony of voices, like a dissonant dance between captor and captive. 

It is this use of reversals that makes the story so intriguing even if the wackiness strays into outlandish territory. The power dynamic is constantly in flux: although these women appear to be prisoners, they often seem to hold the real power. The men, for all their authority and control, are portrayed as emotionally fragile and desperate. So much so that the narrator even resorts to doing the dishes in a desperate attempt to make his hostage stay. This moment, simultaneously domestic and pathetic, underscores Barthelme’s central irony: in trying to assert their dominance, these men become trapped in the very roles they are trying to enforce.

Ultimately, the story deconstructs the fantasy of male authority within the domestic sphere. The men cling to outdated notions of control, but their actions only reveal their deep insecurities and their dependence on the very women they claim to dominate. Barthelme dismantles the power structures of traditional gender roles by blurring the lines between control and submission, masculine and feminine. Above all else, they are rendered entirely superfluous. 

The Affair of the Pink Pearl by Agatha Christie

 

Thorndyke or Holmes?

If you've ever wondered what would happen if a charming married couple decided to open a detective agency armed only with enthusiasm and a love for classic mysteries, The Affair of the Pink Pearl has you covered.

Tommy and Tuppence may have read their fair share of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Thorndyke stories, but does that really make them qualified sleuths? Probably not. But that’s exactly what makes this story so fun. It kicks off with a humorous scene of Tuppence stepping into their brand-new office, only to find Tommy buried under a pile of books. Turns out, he was doing research on how to be a great detective by consulting with famous novels. They are both clearly in over their heads here (literally and figuratively) but before they can second-guess the whole detective business idea, a young woman shows up at their door with a juicy case: a pink pearl has vanished during a swanky country estate party. Naturally, they jump at the chance to prove themselves.

What follows is a whimsical little mystery that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Honestly, the who-done-it isn’t all that gripping and mostly forgettable. The real charm lies in the duo’s witty banter and the way they throw themselves into their new roles, even mimicking their favorite fictional detectives. The couple's playful chemistry and amateur sleuthing antics is entertaining enough although the actual story lacks any kind of staying power. It's worth reading if you're already a fan of Agatha Christie but it's difficult to recommend based on merit alone. 

Eugénie Grandet by Donald Barthelme

Butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter

Does anyone still read Balzac anymore? Perhaps he's gone out of fashion in the 21st century but his novel Eugénie Grandet undergoes a complete re-interpretation through Donald Barthelme's postmodern lens and parodic style. In typical Barthelme fashion, any kind of  conventional "plot" or linear structure is thrown out the window, replaced with a collage of narrative fragments. It's quirky, absurd and experimental—common adjectives that I have used before many times in describing his work. 

Barthelme version is interested in transforming the original text into parody. The reader is tasked with filling in the gaps through context, which includes fragmented narrative threads, pencil drawings of the title character's hand ("Who will obtain Eugenie Grandet's hand?"), a sketch of her holding a ball, an unfinished letter, etc. There's even an old photograph of Charles (her cad of a fiancé) and a whole paragraph with the word butter repeated over and over again after asking her father to bake Charles his favorite dessert (could this be an exaggeration of her having a temper tantrum?). Again, Barthelme's collage technique is on full display and these textual fragments are representative of his subversive art. I might have appreciated this story more if I was familiar with the original source material but it's still a fun literary experiment.

Barthelme clearly isn't trying to retell Eugénie Grandet in any traditional sense. He’s more interested in bending, poking and deconstructing Balzac's novel while seeing what happens when you filter 19th-century melodrama through postmodern absurdity. There's something entertaining about the way he reshapes this French novel into something strangely compelling and self-aware. It has this playful energy that makes the story enjoyable on its own terms even though there's probably a lot more going on here that went over my head.

Jon by George Saunders

I've tasted other cocoas. This is the best.

Bizarre and disorienting in the best way, Jon by George Saunders isn’t your typical sci-fi dystopia. The worldbuilding exists on the periphery and the reader is dropped into this world without any explanations. All we get are flashes through the narrator’s scattered, hyperactive thoughts that starts to coalesce and make more sense as the story progresses. If you tossed The Truman Show, Black Mirror, and a dash of Samuel Beckett into a blender, you might get something vaguely resembling this story. However, it would still manage to be weirder, sadder, and somehow funnier. Like The Truman Show, Jon explores the unsettling idea of a life lived under constant observation, but with none of the cheerful suburbia. It channels the tech-paranoia and nightmarish unease of Black Mirror, yet filters it through a voice that feels more comically absurd. And then there's the Beckett energy: fragmented thoughts, repetition, and a lingering sense that life might be meaningless, except when it suddenly isn’t.

Our narrator, Jon/Randy, has grown up in what is essentially a corporate prison, raised with other kids to be literal guinea pigs for consumer products. It’s as bleak as it sounds but Saunders leans into the absurdity with sharp, satirical humor. Through Jon’s confused and frantic voice, the author provides a scathing critique on capitalism, media saturation, and how human experience can be warped and commodified. At the heart of all this chaos, is a surprisingly tender coming-of-age story. Jon is just a kid trying to figure out love, identity, and what it means to live freely, even if his idea of freedom has been totally shaped by commercials and advertising slogans. It's funny, unsettling, and surprisingly moving. 

I have always found George Saunders’ writing a bit tricky to sink my teeth into because he seems to be operating on a wavelength just slightly out of my reach. His stories are often quite strange and his writing style can be perplexing in a way that goes right over my head. Much to my surprise, even though it takes on that Saunderian weirdness, this story felt more accessible once you settle into its rhythm. Now that I’ve finally had a taste, I’m actually curious to explore more of his work.