Date: February 20, 2014
Present: Nic, Jane, Sabine, Jen, Gill
We welcomed Sabine to the fold in a cosy, authentic feeling pub which knew little about Bearnaise sauce and whose habit of opening the wine away from the table did little to endear Jane although I maintain it is rather quaint and a remarkably untouristy watering hole so close to Trafalgar Square.
Jane found this novel inaccessible and (like the pub) dated. For Jen it was a non-story, a little like a French film but "kind of nice". I was disappointed, hoping to uncover a lost old gem like The Tortoise and The Hare but instead uncovering a dated non-story ... oops. There was a melancholy sense of foreboding about the (name unremembered) girl, a sense, from the start of the book, that she couldn't have a happy story, a sense which the vague ending (it can't be called a conclusion) did nothing to dispel.
No prizes for me this year. (Unless it is the blooper - yikes.)