Absent in the Spring
Written by Agatha Christie
Narrated by Jacqui Crago
4/5
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About this audiobook
A striking novel of truth and soul-searching.
Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks.
Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her…
Famous for her ingenious crime books and plays, Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
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Reviews for Absent in the Spring
133 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An absorbing, penetrating study of a very very ordinary English woman. Christie's genius with character and her psychological understanding, seen in flashes in her crime fiction, comes to fruition here.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have loved Agatha for so many years. And wondered idly about Mary. Little was said or written of her really. Mary appeared just in the long long lists of Agatha's work
This week I have learned to know Mary. Agatha, majestuous, has taken us into the desert. She has led me again and again into the sands. Mary's wisdom, Agatha's utter knowing and ceaseless generosity, scatter lines of poetry and red buds and remembered scenes in that kaleidoscopic pattern, glowing,moving, true, multi dimensioned.
I am very proud and amazed to know Mary, and so full of respect for the great psychologist and artist Agatha.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The third of Agatha Christie's six novels written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, this one is really rather spiffing! The first two novels showed the keen understanding of character Christie always held, even if she lacked the soaring powers of a true 'literary' writer. This novel, essentially set in one location with one character, and everything else appearing in flashback or psychology, constrains Christie to the point that - like so many other writers - it brings out the best of her. The '40s are responsible for some of Christie's best crime novels, in terms of depth and insight (as she moved away from the 'puzzle' aspect of the '20s and '30s) and this crosses over. That's not to say that this is Iris Murdoch or something, but "Absent in the Spring" is a rather beautiful read. Of the three Westmacotts I've read (the other two being "Giant's Bread" and "Unfinished Portrait") this one is the best recommendation, even if you're only a casual Christie fan.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5It's a bit on the boring side, like listening to somebody's rambling monologue on a psychiatrist 's couch. Many a times I lost thread on who is who and who is where. The name 'Joan' is unambiguous in writing but sounded like 'John' in the reading which added to the confusion until the pronoun 'she' was mentioned. Just as well it was published under Agatha Christie's pseudonym.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great introspective wprk. I wonder how much was autobiographical.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Joan felt a little gentle glow as she turned away from her image in the glass. She thought, Well, it’s nice to feel one’s been a success at one’s job. I never wanted a career, or anything of that kind. I was quite content to be a wife and mother. I married the man I loved, and he’s been a success at his job – and perhaps that’s owing to me a bit too. One can do so much by influence."
Absent in the Spring is the book that Agatha Christie describes as her favourite piece of work - not because it is her best but because it was the book she really wanted to write.
Amazingly, it is a pretty good story even though there is not a single murder in sight!
The story follows Joan Scudamore, a middle-class wife and mother who is returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq and is stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a desert, because of the railway lines being flooded. Oh, the irony.
Anyway, Christie fabulously uses Joan's isolation to let her reflect on her life and ponder over her relationship with her husband and with her daughter.
The crux of the story is that Joan's perception of herself and of the people around her are as much an illusion as the mirage she experiences when out walking in the desert.
The question, however, that keeps the story quite tense is whether Joan will realise this by the end of the book.
I found myself reading this book with some apprehension as I had no idea what to expect. Of course, the biggest surprise was that I could hardly put the book down once the characters had been introduced and Joan's dilemma became clear.
"What was it Blanche had said? You’ve gone up in the world and I’ve gone down.’ 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.’" - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you'd nothing to think about but yourself for days on end I wonder what you'd find out about yourself? Joan finds out when she's stranded in the desert for a couple of days.
I thought Agatha Christie used this name to write romances so it wasn't what I was expecting. I read it in one sitting and found it a bit unsettling, what do you know about yourself? Having said that, I would recommend it. For a quick read there's a lot to make you think. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read it in both Japanese and original version! Great description of a frustrated woman in her midlife crises.I loved the stream of consciousness though I would have expected a cleverer ending. It is saddening that the heroine did not come to her senses.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Read so long ago...A woman who vacations in Iraq? on her own and left with her thoughts. Kind of like being a fly on the wall with a woman you never met on her trip alone, following her around without any say in any matters.