Absent in the Spring, by Agatha Christie

 

A successful woman's self-image crumbles when forced to confront her past.

Joan Scudamore seems to have it all. A husband, Rodney, is doing well as a lawyer. Three grown children – Tom, Averil and Barbara – are all settled in their own way. What could there be to complain about? On a solo trip back from Iraq, after visiting her daughter Barbara who has recently married and moved there with her husband, she gets stuck at a rest house in Tell Abu Hamid, a small town between Aleppo and Mosul. There have been floods and the trains are delayed as a consequence. She could be stuck there for days. In a random twist, she runs into her old school friend Blanche Haggard while in the dining room of the rest house. Blanche is travelling in the opposite direction, to Iraq to be with her new husband. The portrait we get of Blanche is of a reckless bon vivant who has left a trail of destruction in her wake. She's not a malicious character, but someone who has made mistakes in her life but whose attitude is to keep on moving. Joan can't help but contrast her life against Blanche's, and is full of self-congratulation on how successfully she's managed her own.

This early encounter with the fast-track, no regrets Blanche Haggard, which opens the book, sets the scene for a series of personal contrasts. Blanche soon departs and Joan finds herself stranded at the rest house. She has a book to read, but soon polishes that off, only to find herself staring at the dry, endless sand dunes of Tell Abu Hamid. With nothing to occupy her mind, she starts going over her life – her friendships and relationships, and how she has conducted herself. Pretty soon she finds herself full of self recriminations, endlessly tortured by her own thoughts. She fears she is going mad and tries to escape by going for walks, then literally running, even praying, but finds there is no way out of the mind's relentless poking and prodding, that ceaseless internal critical voice. The reader soon learns that Joan is a perfectionist and a control freak, and her refusal to see reality, rather hoping to impose her version of it, has caused grief for both her husband and family. After this torturous confrontation with her true self, Joan decides to change, but can she? Can she let go of her steely ego that seems to offer protection of a certain kind.

Agatha Christie wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Absent in the Spring was the third novel Christie wrote under this name, and was published in 1944. It was apparently one of her favourite novels and was completed in a matter of days. The novel's tight plotting and brisk pacing is reminiscent of a Christie murder mystery. She really is a technical magician, effortlessly weaving together a range of characters and their backstories and problems, making for a highly readable story. What is surprising is how starkly revealing Absent in the Spring is. One wonders, is Joan Scuadmore a self-portrait of Christie herself? The novel does an expert job of portraying that mad state of mind where guilt, anxiety, self-reproach can relentlessly assail us. In the desert, stuck there for days with nothing to do, Joan Scudamore quickly starts to crumble. Her strong character is a social fiction. Interestingly, the cast of hopeless characters that surround her (there are quite a few more Blanche Haggard-type train wrecks in Joan's circle), turn out to be, if not successes, at least admirable failures. We recoil at their bad choices, but respect their humanity.

A brilliant, unforgettable psychological portrait from the Queen of Crime.

Absent in the Spring, by Agatha Christie. Published by HarperCollins. $19.99

NOV 23