07-24-2010, 01:58 AM
(07-19-2010, 08:39 AM)Charybdis Wrote: A lot of references are made to poetry, including the title, though I really don't understand that one.
Mary didn't do the best job of explaining that one. The full explanation can be found on the following blog:
http://bookklubbers.blogspot.com/2009/08...title.html
The novel follows a tradition popularized (if not begun) by Agatha Christie, in which the story structure is broken down according to the lines of a verse, or an enumerated list. So each chapter in the novel focuses on a different "coach", the term used metaphorically.
A classic example of this type of imitative story structure would be Agatha's And Then There Were None, which revolves around the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Indians". In the novel, each chapter represents a line of the verse as the victims of the unseen murderer get bumped off one by one -- and then there were none.
It seems there ought to be a literary term for this sort of device -- not sure if there is.
