Lunchtime read: The Tales of Ivan Belkin

This story has a great twist that you don’t see coming right until the very end and is written in a gripping style that takes you from one melodrama to another.

Blizzard
A young couple are in love but the girl’s parents disapprove so they plan to elope and get married in a church nearby before lying low and hoping the parents will become reconciled to what has happened. But the night they plan to depart there is a terrible blizzard and the groom completely misses the church getting lost in the snow and then breaks links with the family and goes to fight against Napoleon and dies from his wounds after the battle of Borodino. Meanwhile the girl is heartbroken and almost dies of fever but years later falls in love with a young officer. But he tells her that he cannot get married because one night in a blizzard he walked by mistake into a church and ended up marrying a stranger…

Fantastic stuff. More tomorrow…