Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Absent in the Spring
    Unavailable
    Absent in the Spring
    Unavailable
    Absent in the Spring
    Audiobook6 hours

    Absent in the Spring

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Jacqui Crago

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    A striking novel of truth and soul-searching.

    Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks.
    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…

    Famous for her ingenious crime books and plays, Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 5, 2012
    ISBN9780007399048
    Unavailable
    Absent in the Spring
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

    More audiobooks from Agatha Christie

    Related to Absent in the Spring

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cracking The Case

      Mar 25, 2020

      Cracking The Case
      3 min read

    • Article

      Death On The Nile

      Jan 8, 2021

      Death On The Nile
      1 min read

    • Article

      Dirty John: Newlyweds

      Oct 3, 2017

      Dirty John: Newlyweds
      10 min read

    • Article

      Lie Of The LAND

      Aug 2, 2023

      Lie Of The LAND
      8 min read

    • Article

      Dirty John: The Real Thing

      Oct 2, 2017

      LOS ANGELES - Their first date was at Houston's, a restaurant in Irvine where he opened the door for her and put her napkin on her lap. Candles flickered along the polished-mahogany bar; jazz drifted from speakers; conversation purred. Debra Newell h

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Wildest Place OF ALL

      Mar 9, 2022

      The Wildest Place OF ALL
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Wildest Place OF ALL

      Mar 23, 2022

      The Wildest Place OF ALL
      9 min read

    • Article

      One Carrot

      Jul 2, 2020

      One Carrot
      5 min read

    • Article

      The DATING GAME

      Aug 3, 2022

      The DATING GAME
      8 min read

    • Article

      The DATING GAME

      Apr 2, 2024

      The DATING GAME
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Wildest Place OF ALL

      Mar 16, 2022

      The Wildest Place OF ALL
      9 min read

    • Article

      Decisions, Decisions

      Aug 27, 2020

      Decisions, Decisions
      5 min read

    • Article

      A friend IN NEED

      Oct 28, 2020

      “‘And then she said the final straw was when he decided to became a nudist.’ My charity shop colleague, Grace, and I are sitting in the window of The Nice Little Coffee Shop In The High Street, which has managed to survive lockdown by the skin of it

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mammy Dearest

      Mar 20, 2022

      Noelle McCarthy, the broadcaster, podcaster and journalist, has two obsessions: her mother and Dracula. She has written a memoir, Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter, in which both characters flounce across the pages, one with fangs wearing a cape,

      8 min read

    • Article

      Keeping Up With JONATHAN

      Oct 18, 2022

      Keeping Up With JONATHAN
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why 50 Is The New 40

      Mar 9, 2021

      On the night of my 40th birthday, I thought I had it sussed. Getting dressed for my party in a poppy-print Joseph dress and purple patent Chloé Mary Janes, I reflected on my good fortune. I had just landed a job as the editor of a parenting magazine.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Finding Myself At

      Aug 27, 2020

      Finding Myself At
      3 min read

    • Article

      Absolute Best

      Apr 30, 2021

      Absolute Best
      20 min read

    • Article

      More

      May 10, 2023

      Jacob was finishing his cup of coffee, which he didn’t really need with his nerves already shaking him, when his wife, Dina, walked over with the coffee pot. “More?” She inquired sweetly, but he shook his head. He had enough coffee. He had enough in

      11 min read

    • Article

      Slanted & enchanted

      May 30, 2021

      MIRRORLAND, by Carole Johnstone (HarperCollins, $32.99), is the imaginary place identical twins Cat and El have created in the basement of the strange house near Edinburgh they share with their neurotic mother and frightening grandfather. They have m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mirror Mirror On The Wall

      Oct 5, 2023

      Mirror Mirror On The Wall
      10 min read

    • Article

      Fireworks

      Oct 27, 2020

      Fireworks
      6 min read

    • Article

      Holiday happiness

      Jul 20, 2021

      Holiday happiness
      6 min read

    • Article

      Amanda’s Naked Truth

      Oct 26, 2020

      Amanda’s Naked Truth
      6 min read

    • Article

      My Mother, the Troll

      Mar 24, 2023

      My Mother, the Troll
      17 min read

    • Article

      Karen’s CHOICE

      Jul 7, 2021

      Karen’s CHOICE
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Absent in the Spring

    4/5

    133 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      An absorbing, penetrating study of a very very ordinary English woman. Christie's genius with character and her psychological understanding, seen in flashes in her crime fiction, comes to fruition here.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I have loved Agatha for so many years. And wondered idly about Mary. Little was said or written of her really. Mary appeared just in the long long lists of Agatha's work

      This week I have learned to know Mary. Agatha, majestuous, has taken us into the desert. She has led me again and again into the sands. Mary's wisdom, Agatha's utter knowing and ceaseless generosity, scatter lines of poetry and red buds and remembered scenes in that kaleidoscopic pattern, glowing,moving, true, multi dimensioned.
      I am very proud and amazed to know Mary, and so full of respect for the great psychologist and artist Agatha.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The third of Agatha Christie's six novels written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, this one is really rather spiffing! The first two novels showed the keen understanding of character Christie always held, even if she lacked the soaring powers of a true 'literary' writer. This novel, essentially set in one location with one character, and everything else appearing in flashback or psychology, constrains Christie to the point that - like so many other writers - it brings out the best of her. The '40s are responsible for some of Christie's best crime novels, in terms of depth and insight (as she moved away from the 'puzzle' aspect of the '20s and '30s) and this crosses over. That's not to say that this is Iris Murdoch or something, but "Absent in the Spring" is a rather beautiful read. Of the three Westmacotts I've read (the other two being "Giant's Bread" and "Unfinished Portrait") this one is the best recommendation, even if you're only a casual Christie fan.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      It's a bit on the boring side, like listening to somebody's rambling monologue on a psychiatrist 's couch. Many a times I lost thread on who is who and who is where. The name 'Joan' is unambiguous in writing but sounded like 'John' in the reading which added to the confusion until the pronoun 'she' was mentioned. Just as well it was published under Agatha Christie's pseudonym.
    • 5/5
      A great introspective wprk. I wonder how much was autobiographical.
    • 4/5
      "Joan felt a little gentle glow as she turned away from her image in the glass. She thought, Well, it’s nice to feel one’s been a success at one’s job. I never wanted a career, or anything of that kind. I was quite content to be a wife and mother. I married the man I loved, and he’s been a success at his job – and perhaps that’s owing to me a bit too. One can do so much by influence."

      Absent in the Spring is the book that Agatha Christie describes as her favourite piece of work - not because it is her best but because it was the book she really wanted to write.

      Amazingly, it is a pretty good story even though there is not a single murder in sight!

      The story follows Joan Scudamore, a middle-class wife and mother who is returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq and is stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a desert, because of the railway lines being flooded. Oh, the irony.

      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.
      The crux of the story is that Joan's perception of herself and of the people around her are as much an illusion as the mirage she experiences when out walking in the desert.

      The question, however, that keeps the story quite tense is whether Joan will realise this by the end of the book.

      I found myself reading this book with some apprehension as I had no idea what to expect. Of course, the biggest surprise was that I could hardly put the book down once the characters had been introduced and Joan's dilemma became clear.

      "What was it Blanche had said? You’ve gone up in the world and I’ve gone down.’ No, she had qualified it afterwards – she had said, ‘You’ve stayed where you were – a St Anne’s girl who’s been a credit to the school.’"
    • 4/5
      If you'd nothing to think about but yourself for days on end I wonder what you'd find out about yourself? Joan finds out when she's stranded in the desert for a couple of days.

      I thought Agatha Christie used this name to write romances so it wasn't what I was expecting. I read it in one sitting and found it a bit unsettling, what do you know about yourself? Having said that, I would recommend it. For a quick read there's a lot to make you think.
    • 4/5
      I read it in both Japanese and original version! Great description of a frustrated woman in her midlife crises.I loved the stream of consciousness though I would have expected a cleverer ending. It is saddening that the heroine did not come to her senses.
    • 5/5
      Read so long ago...A woman who vacations in Iraq? on her own and left with her thoughts. Kind of like being a fly on the wall with a woman you never met on her trip alone, following her around without any say in any matters.