Book Group. Thursday 5th June.

Thursday 5th June 2008. Book Group.

Today Book Group is at Helga’s house. 

Helga made beetroot salad and coriander. She made grated radish and new potatoes with crushed mustard seeds and pickled herring with horseradish.

The book she chose is called The Woman Who Waited and tells the story of a woman who waited amongst the villagers of Archangel in the very North of Russia for the return of her lover from the war. He didn’t return, so she waited for the rest of her life for him to come back to her. 

Like you wouldn’t

Helga said a Russian would.

I said I didn’t think she had.

Everyone else disagreed.

I said that ostensibley she waited, whereas actually she’d made a life for herself, saving old ladies from dying of cold in the Russian winters and teaching. A fact illustrated by the author with the imagery of the house within a house, of a dwelling within an apparent ruin, of a place of succour in a wilderness.

Everyone else thought that was tosh.

I am not very good at Book Group.