The correct book

It’s book-club tomorrow night, the first time meeting in the evening, inside for an unbelievably long time. We’re all looking forward to it and  I daresay we’ll chat more about ourselves and our news then about the book, which maybe just as well as I’ve had a problem. I’m absolutely brilliant at reading the wrong book,  or forgetting the date, and even on one occasion reading ‘A Girl on a Train‘, instead of ‘The Girl on a Train‘. (There is also a book entitled just ‘Girl on a Train‘.) I confess with the book we’re reading for tomorrow, I did rather leave it late to buy it because I have read it before, albeit a long time ago.

The book we’re due to read is ‘The Country Girls’ by Edna O’Brien. I ordered it as an e-book and settled down to read it  and thought the introduction was rather long and confusing… until I realised I had bought a play of the book. I felt annoyed and foolish, but luckily was able to return it and get the actual novel. It was a couple of days later when I settled down again to read the new correct version, but again there was an immensely long preface, which I skipped and then started reading. As I mentioned, I’ve read it before, but it didn’t seem familiar and I soon realised it wasn’t familiar at all. I’d made another error. Yes I had bought a book written by Edna O’Brien, but it was her autobiography, ‘Country Girl’.

I tried for the third time, and this time I was successful, and do have the correct book, and have started reading it, but the complication is I have somehow bought not just ‘The Country Girls’, but also ‘The Lonely Girl’, and ‘Girls in Their Married Bliss‘, the first, second and third book in the trilogy. I’m not sure I’ll read more than the first one for book club tomorrow, unfortunately, great writer though she is, Edna O’Brien isn’t to my taste – maybe she’ll grow on me as I finish the book, maybe I’ll read them all… or maybe not!