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A review by lucyp21
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
5.0
I only picked up this Agatha Christie (writing under Mary Westmacott) because it had 'spring' in the title and I needed to read it for the reading challenge I was doing. The blurb was not one that caught me but the book really did.
In this book, Joan Scudamore is coming back from visiting her daughter in Baghdad when she gets stranded at an isolated resting place due to the train lines flooding. With nothing to do but think, she turns back over her life and her relationship with her family and her husband, along with remembering the advice of her old headmistress.
This book hurt. Joan is blind to the feelings of her husband and her children, thinking she knows what is best for them and feeling uncomfortable when they prove otherwise. She has labelled herself as 'mother' and 'wife' and thinks she is exemplary in these roles, although as the book carries on, we see her children and husband think otherwise. Joan is very isolated even back home, emotionally more than anything, and she slowly starts to realise it as the book carries on and it is heartbreaking to listen to. She wants the best for her husband and her children but as she slowly learns, she doesn't actually know them enough to know what this is. And ouch.
The most heartbreaking thing is the very end.Joan chooses to ignore the knowledge she has gained about herself and the lives of people around her and continues on without saying anything to her husband or her children. How it was done was masterful because it makes complete sense for Joan's character. It's not that she is ignoring her epiphany to make her life easier, although that is a part of it, but because she can't come to terms with how much she hurt the people she was supposed to love all these years. When she is turning over Rodney's pain in her mind, she talks about how it is worse because she loves him, and asking Rodney for forgiveness, not only leaves her open for rejection, but also forces her to come to terms with how much she has hurt the man she loves so dearly over the years and how he will never love her back in quite the same way. Joan's knowledge of herself and her life was there all the time but she pushed it to the back of her mind over and over again, to the detriment of not only herself but those around her. Her children clearly prefer their father over her and she is all the more worse for it.
We see a chapter in Rodney's point of view right at the end of the book as we learn his true feelings about his wife. He talks about hoping his wife will never know how alone she truly is but doesn't seethat she knows the fact well and if she was forced to confront it in any real manner, it would most likely destroy her as she is. Or rather he does know what would happen if Joan knew and doesn't want that to happen to her.
This is not a book I probably would have picked up without the reading challenge and I would have been all the worse for it.
5 stars!
In this book, Joan Scudamore is coming back from visiting her daughter in Baghdad when she gets stranded at an isolated resting place due to the train lines flooding. With nothing to do but think, she turns back over her life and her relationship with her family and her husband, along with remembering the advice of her old headmistress.
This book hurt. Joan is blind to the feelings of her husband and her children, thinking she knows what is best for them and feeling uncomfortable when they prove otherwise. She has labelled herself as 'mother' and 'wife' and thinks she is exemplary in these roles, although as the book carries on, we see her children and husband think otherwise. Joan is very isolated even back home, emotionally more than anything, and she slowly starts to realise it as the book carries on and it is heartbreaking to listen to. She wants the best for her husband and her children but as she slowly learns, she doesn't actually know them enough to know what this is. And ouch.
The most heartbreaking thing is the very end.
We see a chapter in Rodney's point of view right at the end of the book as we learn his true feelings about his wife. He talks about hoping his wife will never know how alone she truly is but doesn't see
This is not a book I probably would have picked up without the reading challenge and I would have been all the worse for it.
5 stars!