Absent in the Spring

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Maybe it is a good thing for us that we don’t face days and days with nothing to do but think about ourselves. The title is a quotation from William Shakespeare's sonnet 98: "From you have I been absent in the spring,.

El final me dejó algo molesta, tenía esperanzas y quería otro final, pero mientras más lo pienso más creo que es el final perfecto.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. All used books might have various degrees of writing, highliting and wear and tear and possibly be an ex-library with the usual stickers and stamps. Depois de terminarmos este livro, sem duvida que precisamos mesmo de fazer uma auto-reflexão profunda de quem somos e quem queremos ser. These novels (I think MW did 6) are not murder mysteries, not anything like what is so popular from AC. Joan Scudamore, firmly established as the central character when the novel opens with her name, is on her way back to England after visiting her younger daughter, son in law and baby granddaughter at their home in Baghdad.

I only read the title story of the three, but it gave me a good sense of her abilities - not just as story teller, but as introspective creator of character. You also might be tempted to reach out to someone you love afterwards, to tell them just how much you appreciate and love them. It’s bittersweet; frustrating at times because you cannot help but want to shake some sense into Joan. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.I have been a lifelong reader of Agathe Christie's detective stories; recently I decided to try her "straight" novels. It also examines the interplay between duty and happiness, and the temptation of living vicariously through one’s children.

Y cuando se está abrumado por la pena y los sufrimientos, se tiene la impresión de que nunca se podrá superar todo aquello, de que jamás se logrará salir de aquellas tinieblas para volver a ver la luz del sol. Joan’s insistence on her views, her lack of sensitivity, compassion and insight have caused a lot of harm to her relationships, to which she is completely unaware. A chance meeting was all very well but she had grave doubts about sustaining the pose of friendship all the way across Europe. I’m still gobsmacked at Christie’s genius in weaving together Joan’s memories with bits of poetry, Bible verses, conversations, etc.She escapes from the rest house to take walks in the desert and the self-examination she’s been putting off indefinitely proceeds.

Despite a few time-period cringe-y references to native people in the lands she has visited, the story is engaging and thought-provoking and clearly a product of Christie's mastery in revealing exactly what we need to know and when. The title of the story comes from a quote from Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare, “From you I have been absent in the spring” and is about being unable to enjoy the spring due to the absence of their loved one. The depths of analysis to which Joan Scudamore, its central character, is drawn into making about herself and her life while essentially marooned at a rest house in the Iraqi desert for several days is so seemingly simple in its conception but nonetheless intensely subtle in its development. The question, however, that keeps the story quite tense is whether Joan will realise this by the end of the book. A middle aged woman stranded alone in the desert, while waiting for a train, faces herself for the first time and like a Saint has an epiphany about her true self, her husband and children.

Absent in the Spring: Stranded between trains, Joan Scudamore finds herself reflecting upon her life, her family, and finally coming to grips with the uncomfortable truths about her life. Written in the midst of her much more celebrated mystery-writing career, "Absent in the Spring" is one of those outlier Christie novels, published under her pen name, Mary Westmacott, that is much more interested in the workings or the human heart than in murder.