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Agatha Christie: Six Mary Westmacott Novels: Giants' Bread / Absent in the Spring / Unfinished Portrait / The Rose and the Yew Tree / A Daughter's a Daughter / The Burden
Using the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie was able to explore human psychology in greater depth. Semi-autobiographical in nature, the 6 novels offer a fascinating insight into Christie’s relationships with her family. Her daughter Rosalind Hicks describes the books as “bitter-sweet stories about love”.
https://www.agathachristie.com/about-...
“As early as 1930, my mother wrote her first novel using the name Mary Westmacott. These novels, six in all, were a complete departure from the usual sphere of Agatha Christie Queen of Crime.
The name Mary Westmacott was chosen after some thought. Mary was Agatha’s second name and Westmacott the name of some distant relatives. She succeeded in keeping her identity as Mary Westmacott unknown for nearly twenty years and the books, much to her pleasure, were modestly successful.
Giant’s Bread was first published in 1930 and was to be the first of six books under this nom de plume. It is a novel about Vernon Deyre, his childhood, his family, the two women he loved and his obsession with music. My mother had some experience of the musical world having been trained as a singer and a concert pianist in Paris when she was young.
She was interested in modern music, and tried to express the feelings and ambitions of the singer and the composer. There is a lot about childhood and the First World War taken from her own experiences.
Her publishers, Collins, were not very enthusiastic about this change of direction in her work as she was at this time becoming quite well known in the world of detective fiction. They needn’t have worried. In 1930 she also published The Mysterious Mr Quin and, Murder at the Vicarage – Miss Marple’s first book. During the next ten years there followed no less than sixteen full length Poirot stories including such titles as Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders, Death on the Nile, and Appointment with Death.
Her second Mary Westmacott book Unfinished Portrait was published in 1934. It also relied a lot on her own experiences and early life. In 1944 she published Absent in the Spring . She wrote in her autobiography:
“Shortly after that, I wrote the one book that has satisfied me completely. It was a new Mary Westmacott, the book that I had always wanted to write, that had been clear in my mind. It was the picture of a woman with a complete image of herself, of what she was, but about which she was completely mistaken. Through her own actions, her own feelings and thoughts, this would be revealed to the reader. She would be, as it were, continually meeting herself, not recognising herself, but becoming increasingly uneasy. What brought about this revelation would be the fact that for the first time in her life she was alone – completely alone – for four or five days.
“I wrote that book in three days flat…I went straight through…I don’t think I have ever been so tired…I didn’t want to change a word and although I don’t know myself of course what it is really like, it was written as I meant to write it, and that is the proudest joy and author can have.”
I think Absent in the Spring combines many talents from Agatha Christie, the detective story writer. It is very well constructed, compulsive reading. You get a wonderfully clear picture of all the family from the thoughts of one woman alone in the desert – really quite a triumph.
In 1947 she wrote The Rose and the Yew Tree . This was a great favourite of hers and of mine too. It is a haunting and beautiful story. Strangely enough Collins didn’t like it and as they hadn’t been very kind about any of the Mary Westmacotts, she took it to Heinemann who published this and her last two books – A Daughter’s a Daughter (1952) and The Burden (1956).
The Mary Westmacott books have been described as romantic novels but I don’t think that is really a fair assessment. They are not ‘love stories’ in the general sense of the term, and they certainly have no happy endings. They are, I believe, about love in some of its most powerful and destructive forms.
The possessive love of a mother for her child, or a child for its mother in both Giant’s Bread and Unfinished Portrait . The battle between the widowed mother and her grown-up daughter in A Daughter’s a Daughter . A girl’s obsession with her younger sister in The Burden and the closeness of love to hate – the Burden in this story being the weight of one person’s love on someone else.
Mary Westmacott never enjoyed the same critical acclaim as Agatha Christie, but the books achieved some recognition in a minor way and she was pleased when people enjoyed them – she was able to fulfil her wish to write something different.”
Rosalind Hicks
https://www.agathachristie.com/about-...
“As early as 1930, my mother wrote her first novel using the name Mary Westmacott. These novels, six in all, were a complete departure from the usual sphere of Agatha Christie Queen of Crime.
The name Mary Westmacott was chosen after some thought. Mary was Agatha’s second name and Westmacott the name of some distant relatives. She succeeded in keeping her identity as Mary Westmacott unknown for nearly twenty years and the books, much to her pleasure, were modestly successful.
Giant’s Bread was first published in 1930 and was to be the first of six books under this nom de plume. It is a novel about Vernon Deyre, his childhood, his family, the two women he loved and his obsession with music. My mother had some experience of the musical world having been trained as a singer and a concert pianist in Paris when she was young.
She was interested in modern music, and tried to express the feelings and ambitions of the singer and the composer. There is a lot about childhood and the First World War taken from her own experiences.
Her publishers, Collins, were not very enthusiastic about this change of direction in her work as she was at this time becoming quite well known in the world of detective fiction. They needn’t have worried. In 1930 she also published The Mysterious Mr Quin and, Murder at the Vicarage – Miss Marple’s first book. During the next ten years there followed no less than sixteen full length Poirot stories including such titles as Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders, Death on the Nile, and Appointment with Death.
Her second Mary Westmacott book Unfinished Portrait was published in 1934. It also relied a lot on her own experiences and early life. In 1944 she published Absent in the Spring . She wrote in her autobiography:
“Shortly after that, I wrote the one book that has satisfied me completely. It was a new Mary Westmacott, the book that I had always wanted to write, that had been clear in my mind. It was the picture of a woman with a complete image of herself, of what she was, but about which she was completely mistaken. Through her own actions, her own feelings and thoughts, this would be revealed to the reader. She would be, as it were, continually meeting herself, not recognising herself, but becoming increasingly uneasy. What brought about this revelation would be the fact that for the first time in her life she was alone – completely alone – for four or five days.
“I wrote that book in three days flat…I went straight through…I don’t think I have ever been so tired…I didn’t want to change a word and although I don’t know myself of course what it is really like, it was written as I meant to write it, and that is the proudest joy and author can have.”
I think Absent in the Spring combines many talents from Agatha Christie, the detective story writer. It is very well constructed, compulsive reading. You get a wonderfully clear picture of all the family from the thoughts of one woman alone in the desert – really quite a triumph.
In 1947 she wrote The Rose and the Yew Tree . This was a great favourite of hers and of mine too. It is a haunting and beautiful story. Strangely enough Collins didn’t like it and as they hadn’t been very kind about any of the Mary Westmacotts, she took it to Heinemann who published this and her last two books – A Daughter’s a Daughter (1952) and The Burden (1956).
The Mary Westmacott books have been described as romantic novels but I don’t think that is really a fair assessment. They are not ‘love stories’ in the general sense of the term, and they certainly have no happy endings. They are, I believe, about love in some of its most powerful and destructive forms.
The possessive love of a mother for her child, or a child for its mother in both Giant’s Bread and Unfinished Portrait . The battle between the widowed mother and her grown-up daughter in A Daughter’s a Daughter . A girl’s obsession with her younger sister in The Burden and the closeness of love to hate – the Burden in this story being the weight of one person’s love on someone else.
Mary Westmacott never enjoyed the same critical acclaim as Agatha Christie, but the books achieved some recognition in a minor way and she was pleased when people enjoyed them – she was able to fulfil her wish to write something different.”
Rosalind Hicks
944 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1983
19 people are currently reading
897 people want to read
About the author
Mary Westmacott
22 books684 followersPseudonym used by
Agatha Christie
to write her dramatic novels about relationships.
Associated Names:
Мэри Вестмакотт (Russian)
Мері Вестмакотт (Ukrainian)
Associated Names:
Мэри Вестмакотт (Russian)
Мері Вестмакотт (Ukrainian)
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 30, 2014
Many people are familiar with Agatha Christie's mysteries. We've grown accustomed to stumbling over bodies in libraries, discovering that seemingly innocuous, hen-pecked husbands are actually homicidal maniacs, and having perfectly innocent train rides turn into murder scenes. Oh yes, Agatha Christie, as the Queen of Crime, is a well-known, well-respected figure. But Mary Westmacott…who has ever heard of her? Her novels, full of psychology, romance, and the complexity of human relationships, are nothing like Agatha's spine-tingling who-done-its. This is the work of an extremely intelligent, highly-sensitive literary artist. But if you read closely…if you study the language, the sentiment, the well-crafted plot twists and turns…you begin to see the truth. Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie, all right. But she's an Agatha who most people never bother to get to know. She's a softer, more vulnerable Agatha, an Agatha who is writing from the heart rather than the brain. If you're a true fan of the Queen of Crime, Mary Westmacott's novels are not to be missed
April 5, 2017
Τρία αστεράκια για την ποιότητα των βιβλίων αυτών καθαυτών (είναι καλογραμμένα και ενδιαφέροντα, αλλά επίσης κλισε, μελοδραματικά και παρωχημένα), αλλά για τους φαν της Αγκάθα Κρίστι τα συστήνω ανεπιφύλακτα, γιατί το Mary Westmacott είναι το ψευδώνυμο με το οποίο εκδόθηκαν τα πολύ λίγα μη αστυνομικά μυθιστορήματά της. Όπως και η αυτοβιογραφία της, προσδίδουν επιπλέον βάθος στο έργο της.
May 7, 2023
It was intriguing to read these novels Agatha Christie wrote under a penname. They were haunting, thought-provoking, and often sad. Wouldn't recommend for people easily affected by the deeper and darker side of humanity. At times I was conflicted about some of the topics. But I came away from multiple books pondering myself and my own actions and thoughts in a different way. Definitely slower paced and more introspective than any other of Christie's books I've read. The depth of her characters and their complexities immerses you in the stories.
March 25, 2012
Agatha Christie is my favorite author, but these stories all seemed to have the same theme. They were very well written, but horribly depressing and a bit on the preachy, monologue side to me. Not sure if I'd read these again. Disappointed :(
July 24, 2012
Read these when I was very young...wish I still had it to re-read!
August 24, 2020
I have this book of 6 novels and am rereading it. The first one, Giants' Bread is great. Vernon is such an interesting child who grows up to be a troubled musician composing what was at the time considered modern music---lots of crashing metallic sounds. Something of a romance, 2 women are besotted with him and he marries one, goes to war and loses his memory but regains it with the help of childhood friends.
July 20, 2017
These six novels are a bit uneven in terms of quality. None of them is as thrilling as her mysteries, and some of them are downright dull (Giant's Bread and Absent in the Spring in particular). They tend to focus on a mixture of romance and the daily trials of being a woman in twentieth-century Britain, and they emphasize (very SLOW) character development over plot.
They're certainly a must-read for Agatha Christie fanatics like myself--I've now read everything Christie has published, including a few plays that are difficult to get a hold of--but they're certainly not a fun read.
They're certainly a must-read for Agatha Christie fanatics like myself--I've now read everything Christie has published, including a few plays that are difficult to get a hold of--but they're certainly not a fun read.
September 17, 2025
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***
"Mi chiedo da dove nascano questi impulsi interiori a creare e a volte penso che ci siano momenti in cui ci si sente più vicini a Dio, perché ci è stato concesso di provare la gioia della creazione. Siamo riusciti a fare qualche cosa di diverso da noi, in una specie di unione ideale con l'Onnipotente."
★★★★☆: "Ti proteggerò", "Nell e Jane", "Rosa d'autunno"
★★★☆☆: "Il deserto del cuore", "Ritratto incompiuto", "Una figlia per sempre"
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
***
"Mi chiedo da dove nascano questi impulsi interiori a creare e a volte penso che ci siano momenti in cui ci si sente più vicini a Dio, perché ci è stato concesso di provare la gioia della creazione. Siamo riusciti a fare qualche cosa di diverso da noi, in una specie di unione ideale con l'Onnipotente."
★★★★☆: "Ti proteggerò", "Nell e Jane", "Rosa d'autunno"
★★★☆☆: "Il deserto del cuore", "Ritratto incompiuto", "Una figlia per sempre"
December 27, 2015
Agatha Christie wrote six novels under this pen name. These are not Poirot and Marple novels; style and content are entirely different from such and from one another. I really enjoyed them. Read them for yourself and see...
December 12, 2020
These stories are not easy read. They are pretty heavy-hearted.
It took me six months to finish the book, and in between stories I had to break away to read something else so I could continue to the next one with a fresh eyes (heart and mind), so to speak.
I do not know WHY Christie wanted to write these stories, but I think, in my humble opinion, maybe she wanted to explore the vulnerabilities of relationships, any kind of relationship, the labour of love, the burden of love, in relationships. Well, I think it would take a burden of love on a reader’s part to read this particular book - wouldn’t recommend reading these stories consecutively, but very much worth the patience to.
CONTENTS
Giants’ Bread (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
Vernon Deyre is a sensitive and brilliant musician, even a genius. But there is a high price to be paid for his talent, especially by his family and the two women in his life. His sheltered childhood in the home he loves has not prepared Vernon for the harsh reality of his adult years, and in order to write the great masterpiece of his life, he has to make a crucial decision with no time left to count the cost.
“As I grow older I am more and more convinced that there is nothing so pathetic, so ridiculous, so absurd, and so absolutely wonderful as Man.” - Carl Bowerman, the most distinguished of English musical critics, Pg. 8
“Things are never so frightening in front of you as they are behind you. Remember that. Anything seems frightening when it’s behind your back and you can’t see it. That’s why it’s always better to turn and face things - and then very often you find they are nothing at all.” - Pg. 31
To attempt to discover something new and force it on the world is always a thankless task. - Pg. 81
Nobody welcomes genius. - Pg. 81
They felt that age-long lovers’ delusion that everything must come right because they loved.. - Pg. 98
Life isn’t like a penny novelette. - Pg. 111
Half your dreams are only confused memories of the future. - Pg. 111
How little all the things you have got matter. - Pg. 113
Without courage nothing can ever be accomplished. Those without courage turn their backs on life. - Pg. 116
Friendship is not a kind of equilateral triangle. - Jane Harding, Pg. 125
Life is a difficult, dangerous but, endlessly interesting adventure. - Jane Harding, Pg. 125
A slave of convention [a slave of the unconventional](, makes just as much for narrowness and prejudice.) - Pg. 128
Separation in time is worse than separation in space. if you are the wrong age for a person, nothing keeps you apart so hopelessly. You may be made for one another, but be born at the wrong time for each other. - Pg. 128
When are thing’s offered you, you’ve got to choose whether you’ll except it or refused it. that’s destiny. And when you’ve made your choice you must abide by it without looking back. - Pg. 129
It’s the hardest thing in the world for people with different incomes to continue friends. - Jane Harding, Pg. 134
You can be clever, you can have the brains to foresee things, and the wits to plan things, and the force to succeed, but with all the cleverness in the world you can’t avoid suffering some way or another. - Sebastian Levinne, Pg. 145
If you pursued safety and nothing but safety. You would get your wings singed, perhaps, but that would be all. You’d build a nice smooth wall and hide yourself inside it. - Sebastian Levinne, Pg. 145
You had to have that wall of illusion and lies to help you to endure the solid facts. It was Nature’s way of providing a way of escape. - Pg. 152
Perhaps, if you had courage, things were always easy. Perhaps that was the great secret of life. - Pg. 156
The future exists at the same time as the past.
We travel through time as we travel through space.
- Pg. 217
Amazing things are sometimes born out of vice and filth and anarchy. - Pg. 218
The things that die endure, and the things that die perish. - Pg. 219
***
Love is a tangle of spider webs.
At first, I got really impatient with all that talk of love; romance is never my thing, but gradually I was drawn to the story and couldn’t put the book aside.
It’s very Titanic!
Absent in the Spring (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
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. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself. 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…
Life really was a series of petty dramas. - Pg. 236
Unfinished Portrait (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
Bereft of the three people she has held most dear - her mother, her husband and her daughter - Celia is on the verge of suicide. Then one night on an exotic island she meets Larraby, a successful portrait painter, and through a long night of talk reveals how she is afraid to commit herself to a second chance of happiness with another person, yet is not brave enough to face life alone. Can Larraby help Celia come to terms with the past or will they part, her outcome still uncertain?
For it is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour; for then I could have borne it;
Neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me; for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him;
But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend.
We took sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends. (Psalm 55. Exaudi, Deus.) - Pg. 522
The world is like that - full of cruelty and pain - because people are stupid. - Pf. 522
***
This kind of girlish/womanish love/romance story is really not my cup of tea. It drags on and on....
I am not saying it’s badly written but just not for me.
After I finished reading it, I cheated half way through by skipping here and there, I feel sad, a voided sadness that leaves a lump in my heart. We are selfish lots, and we are cruel; we may be surrounded with loved ones but fundamentally we are loners; and we live or prefer to live in our own worlds than face the reality.
The Rose and the Yew Tree (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
A beautiful, upper class woman marries a working class opportunist, but his attempts to elevate himself lead to unforeseen consequences.
When you come to think of it, a bad film is exactly what history really is. - Pg. 539
How little it matters why a thing happens! - Pg. 544
The animal in pains knows only pain or the surcease of pain, it can concentrate on nothing else. - Pg. 544
Animals don’t think - their minds are relaxed, passive, until an emergency arises with which they have to deal. Thinking (in the speculative sense of the word) is really a highly artificial process which we have taught ourselves with some trouble. We worry over what we did yesterday and debate w hat we are going to do today and what will happen tomorrow. But yesterday, today and tomorrow exist quite independently of our speculation. They have happened and will happen to us no matter what we do about it. - Pg. 551
We have, all of us, progressed such a long way from simplicity that we don’t know what it is when we meet it. To feel a thing is always much easier -much less trouble - than to think it. Only, in the complexities of civilized life, feeling isn’t accurate enough. - Teresa Norreys, Pg. 593
Fine words butter no parsnips. - Pg. 620
What are politics after all but adjacent booths at the world fair, each offering their own cheap-jack specific to cure all ills?... And gullible public swallows the chatter. - Pg. 621
A Daughter's A Daughter (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
The love between a mother and daughter turns to jealousy and bitterness in Christie's fifth novel published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Ann Prentice falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness. Her only child, Sarah, cannot contemplate the idea of her mother marrying again and wrecks any chance of her remarriage. Resentment and jealousy corrode their relationship as each seeks relief in different directions. Are mother and daughter destined to be enemies for life or will their underlying love for each other finally win through?
Never deny the truth. One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself. That’s the answer. It’s not always easy. - Pg. 670
The natural second blooming is of the mind and spirit and it takes place at middle age. Women take more interest in personal things as they grow older. Men’s interests grow narrower, women’s grow wider. A woman of sixty, if she’s got any individuality at all - is an interesting person. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 672
Middle age is an age of great possibilities. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 672
Whatever one accomplishes in life, it is really very little and could always quite easily have been accomplished by somebody else. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 689
Humility should always lie behind effort. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 689
For work was one of the chief avenues by which one escapes from oneself. And to live with oneself, without subterfuge, and in humility and content, was to attain the only true harmony of life. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 735
Language is given you to conceal your thoughts as much as to express them. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 751
Half the troubles in life come from pretending to oneself that one is a better and finer human being that one is. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 770
Recognize the truth of your actions, by all means, but having done so, pass on. You can’t put the clock back and you can’t usually undo what you have done. Continue living. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 793
The Burden (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
The bounds of jealousy, love and obsession blur in this tale of the fierce relationship between two sisters
“Friendship should never be strained too far.” - John Baldock, Pg. 816
“You need courage to get through this world, courage and a gay heart.” - John Baldock, Pg. 842
“Unselfishness in a woman can be as disastrous as a heavy hand in pastry.” - John Baldock, Pg. 842
“I’ve known a thousand ways of love
And each one made the loved one rue.” - Pg. 843
“I've known a hundred kinds of love;
All made the loved one rue;” - Emily Bronte
“The fate of every man is bound about his neck.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 886
Happiness is one of the foods of life, it encourages growth, it is a great teacher, but it is not the purpose of life, and is, in itself not ultimately satisfying. - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 889
“We all have fantasies that help us to bear the lives we live.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 889
“We hurt each other, and hurt ourselves.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 892
“To encourage people to give of their best -“
“is forcing them to live at a very high attitude; to keep up being what someone expects you to be is to live under a great strain. Too great a strain leads eventually to collapse.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 899
“Men cannot be trusted with power, it rots him from within.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 911
“It is a question of being in harmony.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 912
“Does a person ever seem the same to two different people?” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 931
“Don’t interfere. Why do we think we know what’s best for other people?” - Laura Franklin, Pg. 932
It took me six months to finish the book, and in between stories I had to break away to read something else so I could continue to the next one with a fresh eyes (heart and mind), so to speak.
I do not know WHY Christie wanted to write these stories, but I think, in my humble opinion, maybe she wanted to explore the vulnerabilities of relationships, any kind of relationship, the labour of love, the burden of love, in relationships. Well, I think it would take a burden of love on a reader’s part to read this particular book - wouldn’t recommend reading these stories consecutively, but very much worth the patience to.
CONTENTS
Giants’ Bread (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
Vernon Deyre is a sensitive and brilliant musician, even a genius. But there is a high price to be paid for his talent, especially by his family and the two women in his life. His sheltered childhood in the home he loves has not prepared Vernon for the harsh reality of his adult years, and in order to write the great masterpiece of his life, he has to make a crucial decision with no time left to count the cost.
“As I grow older I am more and more convinced that there is nothing so pathetic, so ridiculous, so absurd, and so absolutely wonderful as Man.” - Carl Bowerman, the most distinguished of English musical critics, Pg. 8
“Things are never so frightening in front of you as they are behind you. Remember that. Anything seems frightening when it’s behind your back and you can’t see it. That’s why it’s always better to turn and face things - and then very often you find they are nothing at all.” - Pg. 31
To attempt to discover something new and force it on the world is always a thankless task. - Pg. 81
Nobody welcomes genius. - Pg. 81
They felt that age-long lovers’ delusion that everything must come right because they loved.. - Pg. 98
Life isn’t like a penny novelette. - Pg. 111
Half your dreams are only confused memories of the future. - Pg. 111
How little all the things you have got matter. - Pg. 113
Without courage nothing can ever be accomplished. Those without courage turn their backs on life. - Pg. 116
Friendship is not a kind of equilateral triangle. - Jane Harding, Pg. 125
Life is a difficult, dangerous but, endlessly interesting adventure. - Jane Harding, Pg. 125
A slave of convention [a slave of the unconventional](, makes just as much for narrowness and prejudice.) - Pg. 128
Separation in time is worse than separation in space. if you are the wrong age for a person, nothing keeps you apart so hopelessly. You may be made for one another, but be born at the wrong time for each other. - Pg. 128
When are thing’s offered you, you’ve got to choose whether you’ll except it or refused it. that’s destiny. And when you’ve made your choice you must abide by it without looking back. - Pg. 129
It’s the hardest thing in the world for people with different incomes to continue friends. - Jane Harding, Pg. 134
You can be clever, you can have the brains to foresee things, and the wits to plan things, and the force to succeed, but with all the cleverness in the world you can’t avoid suffering some way or another. - Sebastian Levinne, Pg. 145
If you pursued safety and nothing but safety. You would get your wings singed, perhaps, but that would be all. You’d build a nice smooth wall and hide yourself inside it. - Sebastian Levinne, Pg. 145
You had to have that wall of illusion and lies to help you to endure the solid facts. It was Nature’s way of providing a way of escape. - Pg. 152
Perhaps, if you had courage, things were always easy. Perhaps that was the great secret of life. - Pg. 156
The future exists at the same time as the past.
We travel through time as we travel through space.
- Pg. 217
Amazing things are sometimes born out of vice and filth and anarchy. - Pg. 218
The things that die endure, and the things that die perish. - Pg. 219
***
Love is a tangle of spider webs.
At first, I got really impatient with all that talk of love; romance is never my thing, but gradually I was drawn to the story and couldn’t put the book aside.
It’s very Titanic!
Absent in the Spring (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
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. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself. 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…
Life really was a series of petty dramas. - Pg. 236
Unfinished Portrait (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
Bereft of the three people she has held most dear - her mother, her husband and her daughter - Celia is on the verge of suicide. Then one night on an exotic island she meets Larraby, a successful portrait painter, and through a long night of talk reveals how she is afraid to commit herself to a second chance of happiness with another person, yet is not brave enough to face life alone. Can Larraby help Celia come to terms with the past or will they part, her outcome still uncertain?
For it is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour; for then I could have borne it;
Neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me; for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him;
But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend.
We took sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends. (Psalm 55. Exaudi, Deus.) - Pg. 522
The world is like that - full of cruelty and pain - because people are stupid. - Pf. 522
***
This kind of girlish/womanish love/romance story is really not my cup of tea. It drags on and on....
I am not saying it’s badly written but just not for me.
After I finished reading it, I cheated half way through by skipping here and there, I feel sad, a voided sadness that leaves a lump in my heart. We are selfish lots, and we are cruel; we may be surrounded with loved ones but fundamentally we are loners; and we live or prefer to live in our own worlds than face the reality.
The Rose and the Yew Tree (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
A beautiful, upper class woman marries a working class opportunist, but his attempts to elevate himself lead to unforeseen consequences.
When you come to think of it, a bad film is exactly what history really is. - Pg. 539
How little it matters why a thing happens! - Pg. 544
The animal in pains knows only pain or the surcease of pain, it can concentrate on nothing else. - Pg. 544
Animals don’t think - their minds are relaxed, passive, until an emergency arises with which they have to deal. Thinking (in the speculative sense of the word) is really a highly artificial process which we have taught ourselves with some trouble. We worry over what we did yesterday and debate w hat we are going to do today and what will happen tomorrow. But yesterday, today and tomorrow exist quite independently of our speculation. They have happened and will happen to us no matter what we do about it. - Pg. 551
We have, all of us, progressed such a long way from simplicity that we don’t know what it is when we meet it. To feel a thing is always much easier -much less trouble - than to think it. Only, in the complexities of civilized life, feeling isn’t accurate enough. - Teresa Norreys, Pg. 593
Fine words butter no parsnips. - Pg. 620
What are politics after all but adjacent booths at the world fair, each offering their own cheap-jack specific to cure all ills?... And gullible public swallows the chatter. - Pg. 621
A Daughter's A Daughter (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
The love between a mother and daughter turns to jealousy and bitterness in Christie's fifth novel published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Ann Prentice falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness. Her only child, Sarah, cannot contemplate the idea of her mother marrying again and wrecks any chance of her remarriage. Resentment and jealousy corrode their relationship as each seeks relief in different directions. Are mother and daughter destined to be enemies for life or will their underlying love for each other finally win through?
Never deny the truth. One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself. That’s the answer. It’s not always easy. - Pg. 670
The natural second blooming is of the mind and spirit and it takes place at middle age. Women take more interest in personal things as they grow older. Men’s interests grow narrower, women’s grow wider. A woman of sixty, if she’s got any individuality at all - is an interesting person. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 672
Middle age is an age of great possibilities. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 672
Whatever one accomplishes in life, it is really very little and could always quite easily have been accomplished by somebody else. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 689
Humility should always lie behind effort. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 689
For work was one of the chief avenues by which one escapes from oneself. And to live with oneself, without subterfuge, and in humility and content, was to attain the only true harmony of life. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 735
Language is given you to conceal your thoughts as much as to express them. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 751
Half the troubles in life come from pretending to oneself that one is a better and finer human being that one is. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 770
Recognize the truth of your actions, by all means, but having done so, pass on. You can’t put the clock back and you can’t usually undo what you have done. Continue living. - Dame Laura Whitstable, Pg. 793
The Burden (https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...)
The bounds of jealousy, love and obsession blur in this tale of the fierce relationship between two sisters
“Friendship should never be strained too far.” - John Baldock, Pg. 816
“You need courage to get through this world, courage and a gay heart.” - John Baldock, Pg. 842
“Unselfishness in a woman can be as disastrous as a heavy hand in pastry.” - John Baldock, Pg. 842
“I’ve known a thousand ways of love
And each one made the loved one rue.” - Pg. 843
“I've known a hundred kinds of love;
All made the loved one rue;” - Emily Bronte
“The fate of every man is bound about his neck.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 886
Happiness is one of the foods of life, it encourages growth, it is a great teacher, but it is not the purpose of life, and is, in itself not ultimately satisfying. - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 889
“We all have fantasies that help us to bear the lives we live.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 889
“We hurt each other, and hurt ourselves.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 892
“To encourage people to give of their best -“
“is forcing them to live at a very high attitude; to keep up being what someone expects you to be is to live under a great strain. Too great a strain leads eventually to collapse.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 899
“Men cannot be trusted with power, it rots him from within.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 911
“It is a question of being in harmony.” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 912
“Does a person ever seem the same to two different people?” - Llewellyn Knox, Pg. 931
“Don’t interfere. Why do we think we know what’s best for other people?” - Laura Franklin, Pg. 932
December 21, 2023
Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie writing non-mystery stories. Absent in the Spring is the only story I read from this collection.
Joan is an incredibly self-absorbed woman, oblivious to the true feelings of her family, and clueless as to how they really feel about her. Due to a travel snafu, she is forced to spend a week in the Iraqi desert. There she almost goes crazy with her thoughts about the past and her family. She begins to see the truth about herself. Will her epiphany last? Short and interesting read by Agatha Christie aka Mary Westmacott.
And yet, I just cannot like a story when I want to strangle the leading lady. What a fool!
Joan is an incredibly self-absorbed woman, oblivious to the true feelings of her family, and clueless as to how they really feel about her. Due to a travel snafu, she is forced to spend a week in the Iraqi desert. There she almost goes crazy with her thoughts about the past and her family. She begins to see the truth about herself. Will her epiphany last? Short and interesting read by Agatha Christie aka Mary Westmacott.
And yet, I just cannot like a story when I want to strangle the leading lady. What a fool!
February 9, 2020
I am not a big mystery reader but I have great admiration for Agatha Christie's writing so I was thrilled to learn about her six non mysteries. What a find! I thoroughly enjoyed each and marveled at the diversity of characters and story lines; she was an amazing author and person. I would love to be able to have tea with her sometime!
May 25, 2025
I'm not all that fond of the first four stories in this collection. They started off interesting but halfway through, it felt like the story dragged and I got bored. But I loved A Daughter's Daughter, and "Baldy" in The Burden was an absolute riot. I rated the collection three stars but for the last two, I rate four stars.
January 14, 2018
Thoroughly enjoyed this set of stories. Ms Christie's writing is so sharp, like cut glass.
May 14, 2022
i lovED IT!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 14, 2023
Mary Westmacott is not nearly as good a writer as Agatha Christie
Almost abandoned it several times, but kept thinking "well maybe the next story will be better" - it never was =(
Almost abandoned it several times, but kept thinking "well maybe the next story will be better" - it never was =(
April 14, 2025
reviewNone
July 19, 2025
I love everything AC.
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