The Waiting Room: A novel about waiting, loneliness, and the people who forgot how to stay. (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9789199156095)

The Waiting Room is a quiet, tender novel about uncertainty, loneliness, friendship, and the slow return to oneself.

For six months, Mara has lived in suspension. She is waiting for an official decision, waiting for job replies, waiting for her future to begin again. Her small apartment has become a world of rituals: tea, inbox checks, tarot cards, a blue notebook, a kettle that never fails her, and a window overlooking a street that keeps moving while her own life feels paused.

Her best friend, Leni, keeps calling. From airports, hotels, cafés, and weekend trips, Leni fills Mara's silence with stories, complaints, dramas, and needs. At first, the calls feel like proof that Mara has not been forgotten. But slowly, Mara begins to understand that being needed is not the same as being known, and that loneliness can exist even in the presence of someone who never really arrives.

As the waiting stretches on, Mara begins to write the truths she cannot yet say aloud. With the help of a blue notebook, an elderly neighbour with terrible coffee, and a small judgmental dog named Otto, she starts to ask herself questions she has avoided for too long: What does it mean to be useful? What does friendship cost when only one person keeps making room? And how do you begin again before the answer arrives?

Gentle, sharp, and quietly funny, The Waiting Room is a novel about the invisible seasons of life: the months when nothing seems to happen, but everything inside is changing. It is a story for anyone who has waited too long, loved too quietly, and finally learned that self-abandonment is not the price of being good.