Christie Talk
Christie Talk - Book Club - Mary Westmacotts
Mary Westmacotts
For fifteen years Agatha Christie managed to keep a secret from the world. The secret was that she also published six novels under the name Mary Westmacott. These were not crime novels - Christie described them as "straights novels".
Part romance, part autobiographical, they give a fascinating insight into another aspect of Christie's work and are well worth reading in their own right.
Warning: These discussions may contain spoilers!
Previous The Burden
1 reply
betty_barnard on 17 Sep 2009 at 8:29 a.m. GMT
I'm a recent reader of the Mary Westmacotts and, apart from Unfinished Portrait, I could hardly believe I was reading Agatha Christie. Absent in the Spring in particular I thought was very good. It worked for me on many levels as a story: about what it's like to be on your own; about how a person can live a life oblivious to how others see them; about how sometimes a person faced with a fork in the road just takes the nicest looking path.
I would love to know if other people thought that Joan made the right decision in the end.
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Absent In The Spring
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Joan Scudamore relishes the opportunity to spend a few days in the desert almost completely alone. She decides she can use the time profitably to rest, think and look back on what she considers to have been a most successful life so far.
However she should have perhaps remembered that you must be careful what you wish for. Convinced that she has led a blameless life with a loving husband and three adoring children she comes to realize, bit by bit, that this rosy hued view of her life is perhaps not the right one. Is she strong enough to face up to the fact that not everyone sees her as she prefers to see herself?
She faces a huge dilemma at the end and makes her choice, but is it the right choice or the coward’s way out?