Agatha Christie’s The Burden

Agatha Christie's

The Burden

Writing as Mary Westmacott

Slow yet Intriguing Story of Consequences

Genre: Slice of Life | Publication Year: 1956 | Original Language: English

Part of my private collection

Agatha Christie, the celebrated Queen of Crime, explored life through six bittersweet personal novels. These were different from her usual crime novels and focussed more on human emotions instead. She published these under a different pen name, Mary Westmacott to prevent the shadow of her earlier literary pursuits upon these slices of life.

Stringed with emotions like care, trust and passion, love can make any one of us happy, our mind peaceful and drive us towards success. Don’t we all love to surround ourselves with the people we love and love us? But love can also be the cause of one’s destruction. It has the potential to strangulate and churn the life out of us as well. Like a flip of a coin, the possibilities rest at half.

‘The Burden’ is one such story of love from the world of the Franklin Sisters – Laura and Shirley as they navigate through love and its consequences. It talks about two exciting themes within the subtext: how a slight change of perception can radically change the emotions of a human and how this blind expression of sensibility can subconsciously engineer a sequence of events derailing life.

Shirley longs for freedom and finds her reality smothered to bits. Unable to breathe in Laura’s world, Shirley searches for an escape. The novel is a startling revelation of what happens when love becomes an obsession. Juggling raw emotions of jealousy, guilt and possessive love, Laura defines a fateful path, creating a string of consequences that none can imagine.

“Sometimes you haven’t the right currency.
And then someone else has to pay…”

Christie and her “not-a-crime” novel

Akin to the trademark Christie’s style, the structure of this novel is concise, poised and intriguing for a cosy afternoon read. The reader is taken along in the unpredictable world of humane emotions. Apart from exploring the vices of obsessive love, subtle sub-themes of sibling rivalry, infidelity, domestic abuse, and the evils of addictive alcoholism are also touched upon.

New characters are introduced as sprouting mushrooms throughout. After a stage, this becomes quite disconcerting. While I was sentimental towards Laura’s predicament, Shirley’s life took centre stage. Unperturbed, I allowed myself to pine for the love-burdened Shirley, but then again, I was to be rattled. The third part takes the reader to an unprecedented foreign location and a new lead – Llewellyn.

By then, I was at my wit’s end. I was figuring out the How, Why and What became quite taxing amidst spiritually lined conversations and God-lightening of the “new” lead.

The rushed epilogue tries to connect the staggered storyline to synchronise the dots with a classic Christie climax. In place of Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple, we have a conversation with Llewellyn and Laura. Interestingly, rationality is replaced by love, and a touch of “Fatal Apple” lipstick is all it takes to conclude the novel on a high.

“For the first time ever, she felt and comprehended the weight of love…”

Memorable Quotes #1