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| The Mary Westmacott Collection |
She and I go back a long way. I can clearly remember the summer of 1986 when I first laid eyes on a copy of The Mystery of the Blue Train. The cover was thoroughly intriguing and the back synopsis didn’t let me down either. Filled with excitement I bought myself the first Agatha Christie novel at the only respectable bookshop in town. As a fourteen year old then, I was mesmerized by the delicious danger and mystery lurking in those pages and found myself face to face with the incredible character of Monsieur Hercule Poirot. The French speaking Belgian detective with his idiosyncrasies endeared himself to me as I made my way through one Agatha Christie title after another. The next couple of years saw me devouring these whodunit’s from the school library, each weekend, without any signs of fatigue or ennui. The adorably fluffy pink Miss Marple, another one of Agatha Christie’s unlikely detectives, also found a special place in my heart, as she unassumingly solved one case after another. With titles like The Secret of Chimneys, Peril at End House, Why Didn’t The Ask Evans?, N or M?, Nemesis, Postern of Fate, They Do It with Mirrors and cover designs to match, I was quite frankly a reader who simply had to submit. And oh, I did. Willingly and with utmost pleasure. After 75 odd titles, I was finally ready to say goodbye, not just to Agatha Christie’s works but to crime fiction in general. With the exception of Sherlock Holmes, no other book in the genre has quite captured my imagination since.
Recently, many years and books later, I came across a shelf literally overflowing with Agatha Christie titles in one of my favourite bookstores. What caught my eye was that this lot in their latest edition(Harper Collins 2009) had very impressive cover designs. So much so that they seemed worth picking up for their exceptional art alone. As I happily delved into this pile, a handful of Mary Westmacott titles too popped out from time to time. Soon I had about six of them basking in my shopping cart. I had discovered that these six were part of a rather interesting collection of Agatha Christie novels that she had penned under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Why? Well, as she said in her autobiography, she wanted “to do something that is not my proper job”, i.e. writing detective novels. In fact, she said that she wrote the first, Giant’s Bread, with a “rather guilty feeling” and enjoyed the project she had undertaken. She went on to write five more novels in this series dealing with her favourite topic: human relationships.
Agatha Christie, the queen of crime, was well-versed on the subject of human nature. It is her insights into the motivations that drive people and their relationships and the conflicts that flare up between them, that added life and shine to her ingenious detective stories. When writing as Mary Westmacott, she turned this understanding of human nature away from the crime genre to create six novels that capture the drama in the life and loves of her various engaging characters. As you will see below, each of these books with their interesting plots and appealing characters, explore a gamut of human emotions: Possessiveness, denial, escapism, contemplation, nature and the inequality of love, perceptivity and awareness, to name a few.
I have to say that I had a wonderful time revisiting one of my favourite authors in another avatar. After all these years, she still managed to charm me. However, this time around my “adrenalin rush” and “grey cell activity” were put in the back burner. And my emotional and sensitivity quotient were ignited and elevated to fine mush. Might I confess, like in the olden days, this time too I submitted. Willingly and with utmost pleasure.
Unfinished Portrait
This book to me is the saga of Celia and her family through the years of her childhood, adolescence, youth and finally middle age. Shy and highly emotional by nature, Celia has the most wonderful childhood, dotted with people, events and anecdotes that are for the most part happy and memorable. The apple of her mother’s eye, Celia, is in turn much loved and indulged by both her father and her grandmother. She grows up in a house that she absolutely adores and eventually has the good fortune to inherit, after her mother’s death. In effect, she has a rather cosy, warm and protected life. Thanks in part to her loving family and also because of her own dreamy nature that allows her to escape into the world of her own imagination.
Of course, harsh reality intrudes when she chooses to marry and start a family of her own. To begin with she marries a man who has contempt for all things impractical and has trouble dealing with emotions per se. His life is rooted in reality and entirely to do with worldly success that his ambitions must necessarily achieve. And as destiny would have it, their daughter too turns out exactly like her father. Although she loves them dearly, and moulds herself to their way of life, Celia is essentially an outsider in her own family.
As long as her mother and grandmother are alive, she is able to run to them from time to time and seek solace in their unconditional love. But the eventual demise of first her grandmother and then her mother, leaves her feeling uncertain and abandoned. Even as she struggles to cope with her loss, she finds her husband has tired of her and wants a divorce. Dealt with this double blow, Celia is at a loss on how to go on.
On the verge of suicide, Celia meets a portrait painter Larraby in an exotic island and through a long night of conversation she realizes that she has to pick up the pieces and make sense of her shattered life.
At the age of 39, she seems to have lived out an entire lifetime. Celia can no longer run away from making, what is perhaps the toughest decision of her life. Risk a chance at happiness with a new man in her life or face the rest of the years ahead on her own.
Absent in the Spring
If one is not at ease with the quiet contemplative side of life, then the prospect of solitude can be a horrifying experience indeed. Agatha Christie’s novel, Absent in the Spring deals with such a premise through the middle-aged character of Joan Scudamore.
The upper middle class English housewife of a well to do solicitor, Joan is the epitome of political correctness and proper conduct at all times. However, her self –righteousness gives way to sheer terror when she is literally stranded alone in a desert for several days with no company or activity to occupy her time.
When the chaos outside has stilled, Joan can no longer ignore all those voices within. “Lizards popping their heads out of holes” she calls them. Frightening, disturbing thoughts assail her. Thoughts that she has managed to keep at bay all these years in her picture-perfect life back home.
So like all soul searching, reluctant or otherwise, Joan encounters the life she has led so far, in all its true colours. Truths pleasant and unpleasant stare her in the face. Her past relationships, attitudes and actions parade in front of her eyes waiting to be weighed and scrutinized. Joan finds herself cornered. For the first time in her life, she is forced to see herself as she really is. But will this moment of truth pave the way for her inner transformation and growth?
Well, it is here when I came to the end of the book, that I was moved with the ultimate choice that Joan makes. Without giving away the surprise, let me just say that Absent in the Spring is a tour de force of a novel from Agatha Christie’s Mary Westmacott collection.
The rose and the yew tree
As the Second World War draws to a close, a victorious England under Churchill returns home to set its house in order. Against this backdrop, unfolds the unlikely love story of John Gabriel and Isabella Charteris.
A ruthless war hero of uncertain origin, John Gabriel will go to any lengths to make a place for himself in post-war British society. He is common, loud and unflinchingly brave. His direct, bold charm seems to work its magic on both the sexes. Isabella Charteris on the other hand is thoroughbred British aristocracy. Beautiful, elegant and groomed with an absolute sense of entitlement, Isabelle is the exact opposite of John. Her prince in shining armour, Rupert is on his way home from the battlefield to sweep her off her feet. All shiny, perfect and sigh-inducing wonderful, right? Not quite. Well, you see it is here, that the love story changes characters.
John and Isabella’s paths cross. Opposites attract. His unbridled obsession for Isabella destroys his ambitious political career. And she gives up her dreams of a secure future to walk away with the man her heart desires. So does this love story reach its happy ending? Well, not before Isabella sacrifices her young life to save her Romeo. Tragic yet strangely fitting, I thought.
A daughter’s a daughter
No relationship is ever perfect. Not even the ones between mothers and daughters. A daughter’s a daughter explores the complex and emotionally charged nature of the relationship between Ann prentice and her daughter, Sarah. Having brought up her daughter on her own, single mom Ann finally falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness in her middle age. However, her daughter Sarah cannot imagine sharing her mother with a stranger. She in her childish insecure way wrecks any chance of this marriage taking place. On having to choose between her only child and the love of her life, Ann makes the ultimate sacrifice. But giving up Richard for the sake of her daughter’s happiness eventually takes its toll on Ann. She transforms into a bitter and resentful creature who covers up her true feelings by adopting a whirlwind lifestyle. This new life of hers is a series of engagements and events with random people and places. From a quiet, gentle woman who was once at ease in her own company, Ann turns into a vibrant, blasé, social butterfly. Now she has little time for even her daughter Sarah.
Sarah, in her own way seeks out a life of adventure that leads to a disastrous marriage. Mother and daughter no longer communicate or share themselves with each other. Unspoken words and bottled up feelings drive them apart slowly but surely. Finally, as events finally reach a point of no return, there is a breakthrough. A huge fight and confrontation between mother and daughter leads to some serious truth telling and spilling over of pent up emotions. Although, devastated at first, Ann feels relief at having said what was in her heart and the hurt she had nursed all this while because of Sarah’s childishly selfish behavior.
An equally remorseful Sarah, realizes how she was responsible for spoiling her mother’s chances of finding happiness with Richard. With some help, Sarah finds the courage to leave her dysfunctional marriage and start afresh as a responsible adult. Mother and daughter do finally, hug and make up at the airport as Sarah is about to go abroad. The unspoken love that binds them together, allows them to be cruel to each other in order to be kind.
The Burden
This is the story of two sisters, Laura and Shirley, who are as different as chalk and cheese. Circumstances put Laura in a place of deep resentment when she has to welcome and accept the birth of her much younger sibling Shirley. Shirley is the bony, blue-eyed baby girl that everyone dotes on, much to Laura’s dismay. She is everything that Laura is not. Compared to Laura’s rather serious, quiet and brooding demeanor, Shirley is blonde, fun, pretty and very popular. However, things change literally overnight as a result of a scary accident. Seeing Shirley’s young life in jeopardy, Laura is moved to heights of incredible bravado. Indeed, she ends up saving her little sister’s life at great cost to her own. And this marks the beginning of a rather oppressive one-sided love that Laura assumes is her ultimate responsibility towards poor helpless Shirley.
Over the years, as destiny guides the lives of these two sisters, we see how something as precious as love can end up destroying it’s recipient, if it’s intention is flawed at the very source from where it emerges.
This is a poignant story of the consequences of misdirected love and responsibility that one assumes on behalf of another individual. So instead of freeing the object of one’s affection, all it really ends up doing is placing a burden that is much too heavy to bear.
Giant’s Bread
This novel is the one I read first in the Mary Westmacott collection. I have to say that I was rather taken aback by the subject, the narrative sweep, characterization and the final ending. It is not just the story of Vernon Deyre, musical genius in waiting, but also about the lives of some very interesting characters. Sebastian, Joe, Jane and Nell are as compelling a people as is Vernon, the main protagonist. Giant’s Bread is about these creative and ordinary lives that follow separate scripts and unfold in ways that are incomprehensible to the other.
All his life, Vernon has been terrified of the one thing that he was always meant to be. A brilliant musician. As a result of his reluctance to accept his destiny, he must spend many years in the wilderness of the mundane and the common place, much to the distress of his family and friends. During this time his destiny visits him persistently in the form of people, events and places. There is really no escape for him. Nell and Jane, the two ladyloves of his life also bring these two disparate worlds to his doorstep. As if that were not enough, even his temporary loss of memory is not good enough to leave him alone.
Vernon battles all these situations with incredible naiveté and self absorption, until at last fate intervenes resolutely in the loss of his true love Jane. This then is the price he has to pay to realize his creative potential. His tortured soul can now only seek solace in music. He is at once saved and returned to the real and only calling in his life. There is poignancy in this moment that is imbued with both the tragic and the triumphant in Vernon’s life.
Note: All photographs in this post are the property of serendipity and all that.
