Review: ABSENT IN THE SPRING, Mary Westmacott

• 
  this edition made available as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• first published 1944 as Mary Westmacott
• #3 of 6 novels
• ISBN: 9780007534982
• ISBN 10: 0007534981
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• On Sale: 24/04/2014
• Pages: 224

Synopsis (publisher)

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. 

From https://www.agathachristie.com/en/stories/absent-in-the-spring

Agatha Christie was always prolific, often finishing a book within a few months, but Absent in the Spring was written in just three days. A psychological exploration, a woman finds herself alone for the first time and begins to reassess her life, finally understanding how others must see her. “She would be, as it were,” Agatha Christie writes in her autobiography, “continually meeting herself, not recognising herself, but becoming increasingly uneasy.”

Under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, it was published as a novel in August, 1944. The publishers Collins were unenthusiastic about the prospect of a third Mary Westmacott, stories which took Agatha Christie away from traditional mystery and allowed her to examine crimes of the heart instead. But they were proven wrong and Absent in the Spring remains one of Agatha Christie’s most surprising and revealing pieces of work. She wrote in her autobiography: “it was written with integrity, with sincerity, it was written as I meant to write it, and that is the proudest joy an author can have.”

It has never been adapted.

My Take

While I have read all of Agatha Christie's novels and short stories, this might be the first time I have read anything written under the nom de plume of Mary Westmacott.

• Giant's Bread (1930)
  
• Unfinished Portrait (1934)
  
• Absent in the Spring (1944)
• The Rose and the Yew Tree (1948)
• A Daughter's a Daughter (1952)
• The Burden (1956)

This novel is not crime fiction and you can't help wondering how autobiographical it is.

Joan Scudamore is travelling back from Iraq to England and misses her train to Stamboul to connect with the Orient Express. She reads the books she has brought with her far too quickly and in the days that ensue has nothing to do. She looks back over her life as a wife and a mother and sees events through different eyes. Joan begins to suspect that others have not always seen her as she sees herself and resolves to behave differently once she gets home.

But will that happen?

A very readable and interesting book.

My rating: 4.6