"If you'd nothing to think about but yourself for days on end I wonder what you'd find out about yourself." This is the keynote of Mary Westmacott's fine novel, "Absent in the Spring."…

Joan Scudamore, on her way back to England from Baghdad, had the opportunity to do a thorough job of soul-searching and self-evaluation. With admirable skill, sensitive and subtle, Miss Westmacott portrays the woman, first, as model wife and mother, second, in the more penetrating role of a woman who had, in one way or another, warped and distorted the lives of the members of her family….

With mounting effect, Miss Westmacott builds up her portrait of an insensitive, calculating woman who never in her life entered the hearts of the people whose lives she shaped. Outwardly the structure seemed strong and admirable; inwardly it was crumbling with rebellion and frustration….

The book closes on a...