Absent in the Spring
by Agatha Christie (read by Jacqui Crago)
HarperCollins (audiobook)
Agatha Christie wrote Absent in the Spring under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. The four books she produced under this nom de plume were not mysteries or thrillers, but introspective realist novels. First published in 1944, Christie herself describes Absent in the Spring in glowing terms as 'the one book that has satisfied me completely. I didn't want to change a word ... it was written as I meant to write it, and that is the proudest joy an author can have'. Fans of Miss Marple might be surprised at this sensitively read account of Joan Scudamore's emotionally fraught life. Stranded in both middle age and the Middle East Scudamore resembles the mournful heroine of a Barbara Pym novel. We know she is stuck waiting for a train, that she has become isolated from her friends and that there is a secret in her background (and no, it's not a murder). What is extraordinary is the portrait of a woman cut off from her own existence, preferring her imagination to the company of others. Jacqui Crago reads with precision and restraint. An unexpected pleasure.