While the Gods Were Sleeping

'It sounds dreadful,' I said to him one day. 'But actually the war is the best thing that ever happened to me.'Helena's mother always said she was a born poetess. It was not a compliment. Now an old woman, Helena looks back on her life and tries to capture the past, filling notebook after notebook with memories of her respectable, rigid upbringing, her unyielding mother, her loyal father, her gold...