Absent in the Spring, by Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott

"I wonder," she paused, "if you'd nothing to think about but yourself for days and days I wonder what you'd find out about yourself--"

One of six non-mystery novels written by Christie under the Mary Westmacott pseudonym. This is the first I've read. Christie wrote it in three days and thought it was one of her best novels.

Middle-aged wife and mother Joan Scudamore is passing through Iraq on her way back from a visit with her grown daughter when a flood strands her at a rest stop for a week with absolutely nothing to do. There's no other guests, she hates the food, she's hardly going to converse with the staff, there's nothing to see but desert, and she only has three books. With no other alternatives, she looks back on her life and slowly begins to realize truths about it and her that she refused to see or admit to before.

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While not a genre mystery, Absent in the Spring does have a central mystery - what is the truth about Joan? - and a sequence of reveals. It's very technically accomplished. It's not a fun book like a lot of Christie's mysteries as Joan is so awful and we're relentlessly inside her head, but it's interesting and I can see why Christie herself liked it. It was a very difficult concept to pull off and she pulls it off.

Christie scale: A single but HAIR-RAISING bit of anti-Semitism. A single but HAIR-RAISING bit of "rape: it does a woman good." MEDIUM amounts of racism.

Happy upcoming birthday to me

On October 29, I will be 50! I spent my twenties and thirties feeling sixteen, and now I feel about thirty. Maybe I'll actually feel fifty when I'm eighty.

I always wanted to be one of those tough older women who lives alone in a cool little house and does crafts and knows the names of all the wild plants and lets the neighborhood kids pick her berries and pet her cats, and now I am. It's everything I imagined it would be.

If you would like to help me celebrate, here are some possibilities.

1. Donate to Tenth Life. This is a small neighborhood no-kill cat rescue and trap-neuter-release nonprofit in Varna, Bulgaria. I personally vouch for it. If you click on the "cats" tag, you will see photos of my visit (plus a bonus rescue hedgehog). A monthly donation, even small, is ideal as it allows them to plan ahead.

2. Write me some fic! Draw me some art! Make me something cool! Mail me something delicious! (This possibility is why I'm posting in advance.)

Here is my Amazon wishlist. If you get me something off it, you may get to read a review of it. Eventually.