The Burden

Name: The Burden
Rating: 4.2 (333 reviews)

by Agatha Christie Book 6 in the Mary Westmacott series.

First published 1956

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4.1(333)

Laura Franklin grows up believing that her younger sister Shirley displaced her in their parents’ affection. After a family tragedy, resentment turns into fierce protectiveness, and Laura organises her life around safeguarding Shirley from pain and from choices she considers dangerous.

The sisters’ relationships carry them across the upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century and into a spiritual community that offers a different language of love and obligation. The novel questions whether self-sacrifice can become a form of domination and whether either sister can build an independent life while gratitude and guilt bind them together.