She reads the books she has brought with her far too quickly and in the days that ensue has nothing to do.

The publishers Collins were unenthusiastic about the prospect of a third Mary Westmacott, stories which took Agatha Christie away from traditional mystery and allowed her to examine crimes of the heart instead. She starts reminiscing, and has something of a brief mental breakdown when coming to some conclusions about her life. What they share with her other fiction is Christie's gift for sharp observations about people, the ambitions that drive them, their relationships, and the conflicts that erupt between them.

The writing is really good, and the way in which the author has slowly revealed - by going back and forth over certain events in Joan's her husband's and children's lives - the hold Joan has had over the lives of her family, the decisions she has had them make beacuse of how she treats them. Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her.

Joan becomes uncomfortable in Blanche’s company especially when Blanche talks about her relationships with men and lists her husbands and lovers, which Joan thinks of as a “singularly unsavory catalog. All used books might have various degrees of writing, highliting and wear and tear and possibly be an ex-library with the usual stickers and stamps. In less skilled hands, this might result in the reader having to wait for the truth until Joan herself is undeceived, but Christie allows us to see what Joan cannot.The domineering Miss Gilbey at her school, the undisciplined schoolmate Blanche, her long-suffering but empathetic husband Rodney, the disappointment of her son Tony who refused to become a solicitor, the sardonic and satirical criticism of her daughter Averil, the mysterious ‘poisoning’ of her daughter Barbara, the intense suffering of Leslie Sherston, Rodney’s fascination first with Myrna Randolph and later with putting a red rhododendron on Leslie’s grave, her mother’s ‘complete lack of method and consistency’, the resentment at her coldness on the part of a servant, Rodney’s jaunty and carefree walk away from her at the train station: all these ‘lizards’ pop up for Joan’s consideration and allow the reader to see into a soul that is as unsympathetic, personally myopic, egotistical and incapable of any real empathy as any I’ve ever read of in any other work. Although I enjoy the television adaptations of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot stories starring Joan Hickson and David Suchet, I have read very few Christie novels. Her domineering character has made miserable the lives of her husband, children, friends and servants. After a lifetime believing that she has been a positive influence on those around her, she comes to realise that she has been deceiving herself.

Remembering this, now, in the desert, Joan shivers at the inference that Rodney was glad she was going away. Was Joan a competent and wise woman with a good head on her shoulders, or was she someone people endured for the sake of it? But they were proven wrong and Absent in the Spring remains one of Agatha Christie’s most surprising and revealing pieces of work.You can’t wait for the ending because you hope for a positive beginning but know deep down that it may not happen. Instead of a murder mystery, it’s an elegant character study that reminded me most of The Enchanted April and The Rector’s Daughter.

The main character is a smug woman who has detached herself from the realities in her life because she just doesn't want to deal with it. Writing anonymously as Mary Westmacott, she also wrote about crimes of the heart, a series of six bittersweet novels with a jagged edge, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.Anyway, Christie fabulously uses Joan's isolation to let her reflect on her life and ponder over her relationship with her husband and with her daughter. I only read the title story of the three, but it gave me a good sense of her abilities - not just as story teller, but as introspective creator of character. As Joan thinks back about her seemingly perfect life with a happy and successful husband and lovely kids, she realizes that the truth is different from her perception. Paul on the way to Damascus"-type revelation that might jar readers' religious feelings, but it can be easily overcome, as it is neither an attempt to convert or offensive in any way. So it had really been quite natural for Joan to ask brightly about Major Reid – she had heard so much about him, she said, that she was really longing to see him.