Mark Aldridge

You want stability.

I sort of do see that logic.

Yeah.

Well, Agatha wrote back and said that she didn't think that the book was Collins' cup of tea, her words anyway, and suggested perhaps we'd better stick to crime.

And actually, when Agatha saw Billy Collins in June 1949, she did joke to him that, if you don't mind, I'll bring my old friend Mary Westacott with me.

Yeah, and I think that's also, though, this feeling a little bit more mainstream, that I think that that can almost be like a slightly intimidating barrier to be like, oh, there are big sections of this book.

Because you want to know, what are we getting to?

Oh my God, why is this person on their deathbed?

Contemporary reviews of the book were mixed.

Yes.

Is that fair to say?

Yes, yes.

Times Literary Supplement said that the pattern of the book is too vague at one point, the later stages of the hero's career, but much material has been skillfully compressed within little more than 200 pages, which is just like, it reminds me of where they're like, oh, the sections of the book featuring this character are better than the rest of the book combined.

That's why people are taking her on holiday and reading her.

Yes, she's very, yes, she loves it.

She's very positive.

Yeah, well, I, for a couple of years, I went and did sort of a guest collector discussion about this and Absent in the Spring for a course that she ran in Cambridge.

And I remember her shock when she asked people whether they liked this or Absent in the Spring more, that Absent in the Spring won the vote.

And she was like, but this is so much the better book.

So I think it's really interesting that obviously reading it for different ways and different things for different people.