8.2 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Not known Publication date August 1944 Followed by Death Comes as the End Publisher William Collins, Sons Preceded by Towards Zero | 4.1/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 160 pp Originally published August 1944 Genre Tragedy Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Similar Agatha Christie books, Mystery books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Absent in the Spring is a novel written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by Collins in August 1944 and in the US by Farrar & Rinehart later in the same year. It was the third of six novels Christie wrote under the nom-de-plume Mary Westmacott.
Contents
Explanation of the novel's title
The title is a quotation from Shakespeare's sonnet 98: "From you have I been absent in the spring,..."
Plot introduction
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.
Literary significance and reception
The Times Literary Supplement's review of 19 August 1944 by Marjorie Grant Cook stated positively, "The writer has succeeded in making this novel told in retrospect, with its many technical difficulties, very readable indeed. She has not made Joan, with her shallow, scrappy mind, sympathetic, and the other characters in the tale, seen through her eyes, lack the charm they had for each other and withheld from her."
J. D. Beresford's review in The Guardian of 25 August 1944 concluded, "It is a very clever and consistently interesting study of a character that not even a desert vision could permanently change."
Publication history
The novel was first serialised in the US in Good Housekeeping in two abridged instalments from July to August 1944.