Absent in the Spring

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Yet Agatha Christie was always a very private person, and though Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple became household names, the Queen of Crime was a complete enigma to all but her closest friends. Dame Agatha Christie wrote this short novel under the name of Mary Westmacot- It is in some ways a film script, or the story-line for a film.

When Joanne finds herself stranded for days in an isolated railroad rest house, she comes to discover what a dangerous thing too much time is for the unquiet mind.And so, Joan’s journey of self-discovery begins, as she finds herself thwarted by the weather and alone in a resting house in the desert with an abundance of time to contemplate her life and the choices she has made over the years and how they have affected her family.

No, she had qualified it afterwards – she had said, ‘You’ve stayed where you were – a St Anne’s girl who’s been a credit to the school. As Joan thinks back about her seemingly perfect life with a happy and successful husband and lovely kids, she realizes that the truth is different from her perception.So it had really been quite natural for Joan to ask brightly about Major Reid – she had heard so much about him, she said, that she was really longing to see him. G. Wells Henry Williamson Herbert Jenkins historical fiction horror fiction Howard Spring Hugh Walpole humorous fiction J. Yearning to be a farmer, but instead forced by Joan to become a solicitor, he has sacrificed his own happiness to meet Joan’s expectations. Percebo o porquê da autora ter optado por um final mais realista e mais próximo da realidade, mesmo assim, eu senti a necessidade de um final que não fosse em vão.

The woman tells it like it is and drops a few comments that cause Joan to reflect on her own carefully willed/created life. Remembering this, now, in the desert, Joan shivers at the inference that Rodney was glad she was going away. When their home is invaded by people the birds face new challenges and have to adapt for the first time in many generations.

It had been quite easy to fill her life with unimportant trivialities that left her no time for self-knowledge. While the storylines included unsavory characters and immoral behavior, each of these stories challenged the reader to think more deeply within about how various decisions made in life affect others. I came away thinking: I wonder if Mrs Christy herself had experienced such an epiphany in her own life! Absent in the Spring is a novel written by Agatha Christie under the nom-de-plume Mary Westmacott which was first serialised in the US magazine Good Housekeeping from Jul 1944.