Absent in the Spring

Product Information

Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /r/ in “Of different flowers in odour and in hue” and the sound of /t/ in “They were but sweet, but figures of delight.” Sonnet 98” As a Representative of Sorrow: This sonnet recounts the separation of the speaker from his loving friend. It begins when the speaker paints his friend’s absence with the touch of woes. April is the time when nature provides solace to the world. Unfortunately, this time, Spring does not bring happiness to him. His friend is not with him. Therefore, he marks this time untimely because the beautiful nature does not appeal to his senses. Even the chirping of melodious birds fails to incite his usual inspiration. Regardless of having all the bounties of the spring, he fails to sing the tale of this lovely season. His mental faculty seems to deny him the capability to appreciate the fertile material mother nature offers him in the spring. In the third quatrain, he tries praising the white lilies and roses, but he feels that their beauty has faded away. He claims that these unique and divine patterns are inherent in love and happiness. Thus, his friend’s absence has turned spring into winter for the speaker. In the final lines, he invites his friend and vows to play with the shadows of the things.

The absence rate across autumn and spring terms combined was 7.4%. In spring term 2021/22, the absence rate was 7.9%, an increase from 6.7% in autumn term 2021, having been consistently around 5% in recent years. The majority of the increase compared to previous years was due to illness, accounting for 5.0% of possible sessions in autumn and spring term 2021/22 combined. Illness includes where positive COVID-19 cases were reported. Porque entonces, ¿qué se hace después de este descubrimiento? ¿Cómo sigue uno su vida? ¿Se atrevería uno a hacer lo necesario para cambiar? ¿O preferiría uno vivir de una ilusión para no sufrir?It was quite ludicrous the embarrassment her question had caused. Barbara had turned quite white, and William had gone red, and after a minute or two he had grunted out in a very odd voice: Brilliantly done; a truly gripping exercise in self-analysis that is so acutely painful in its process since it is such an unwilling endeavour. How much, I found myself wondering, are we all like Joan: naively going through our lives, following our own conceptions of what is right and wrong, and almost totally oblivious as to how little others truly care about us? Maybe it is a good thing for us that we don’t face days and days with nothing to do but think about ourselves. A Goodreads friend kindly sent me a link to the audio version of Absent in the Spring and I was absolutely astonished as I listened to it. I’m not sure what the other Westmacott titles are like, but Absent in the Spring is no trite romantic fiction. It’s hard to review the book without giving away too much of the plot, but I’ll try.

As a diehard fan of Christie, I extend the same love to the books she wrote as Mary Westmacott. These are more personal, introspective, and heavy with melancholy. Absent in the Spring is hard to categorize into a particular genre. Those who put it in romance couldn’t have been more wrong. Drama comes closest, I suppose.Saber vivir es difícil. Una se va cuando se tendría que quedar y se altera cuando debería permanecer tranquila. Hay momentos en que la vida es tan bella que cuesta trabajo creer que pueda ser realidad, y después, ¡pam!, de repente cae sobre una un infierno de catástrofes y sufrimientos. Cuando las cosas van bien, una cree que aquello durará siempre, y es imposible. Y cuando se está abrumado por la pena y los sufrimientos, se tiene la impresión de que nunca se podrá superar todo aquello, de que jamás se logrará salir de aquellas tinieblas para volver a ver la luz del sol. La vida es así. ¡Qué le vamos a hacer!" Christie’s skills at characterization vie with those of her ability to construct plots and write dialogue: all three make her such a very, very good writer. But it is the searing insight of characterization that makes this work so brilliant. Can Joan come face to face with herself and realize how little she is truly loved or cared for since she herself has chosen to restrict her interpersonal relations in such a circumscribed and impersonal degree? More particularly, can she come to see how her children don’t care for her at all and her husband has been in love with another woman? When the narrator does intervene, it is simply to state facts, but through Joan’s eyes, enabling the reader to draw their own conclusions. 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. Why did (Mary Westmacott) Agatha Christie write this book? Was it about her? Was it about someone close to her? Was it cathartic to write? I think it is brilliantly written and quite an accomplishment. To write a novel which is mostly someone's inner thoughts and not have it be just rubbish is amazing. Joan had her Road to Damascus experience in the desert...Yet, she was a short-term convert. Or did she really change and apologize to Rodney but the book ends before that happens? Further to sessions recorded as absence, the rate of sessions recorded as not attending due to COVID circumstances across autumn and spring terms 2021/22 combined was 1.3%. This was 1.0% in the spring term, a decrease from 1.6% in the autumn term 2021, and 29.4% for same period in the 2020/21 academic year.