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Overview
Overview
Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award
From 70-year-old debut author Anne Youngson, a novel about a farmer's wife and a museum curator seeking second chances, hailed by NPR as "the charmer of the summer."
In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn't remember choosing. Both believe their love stories are over.
Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney's famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms. But then Tina's letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Youngson, Anne
- ISBN: 9781250295170
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 7.10 x 0.80
- Number Of Pages: 288
- Publication Year: 2019
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“A portrait in words” that grew out of the author’s contemplation of the Tollund man’s face at the Silkeborg museum in Denmark #SummerReading
Jennifer N. - 6 years agoMeet Me at the Museum is “a portrait in words” that grew out of author Anne Youngson’s contemplation of the Tollund man’s face and the Silkeborg museum in Denmark, sure to be added to every reader’s bucket list upon completion of the novel. But while the premise may be based on a face, the novel is a quaint and poignant epistolary guide through the museum of the larger exhibits of life. In the exchange of letters between museum curator and farmer’s wife, Youngson explores the seesaw between the microcosm of history and macrocosm of horticulture, “the dull detail weight against the pull of the ocean and freedom from depression at the other end...I’m often terrified by how small are the things I study and how big and beyond understanding is everything they represent...are you also terrified by the greatness of what you have to deal with...the natural world where everything changes?” Youngson interrogates the concepts of worth and permanence. “In the before I may have known there would be an after but it was not yet...What lasts? What is it that determines what lasts?...The preservation of an object of beauty carries meaning beyond the physical appearance to those who look at it and handle it after those who first made it and owned it are gone…Nothing is so fixed it cannot be altered...If worthwhile means life supporting, farming is better than archeology, so is medical science. But if worthwhile is life enhancing, well, anything that takes your fancy would be as worthwhile as the boring simple business of producing food.” She constructs metaphoric dioramas of life as a bystander, a Lego builder, or an apples barrel scavenger. “I am like a man standing on a shore watching people he loves rowing a boat. As long as they’re safe in the boat, nothing else is important...I have the idea that other people manage their lives like a set of interlocking boxes each piece fitted snugly to the next like your Danish Lego...and they could move from box to box in full control and with complete confidence that it is the right time to leave one box and enter another. My life is more like a pile of timber. Random...I was taken by this idea of the earth as a barrel of apples where day by day hands reach in and take out the fruit at the top for immediate use and refill it for tomorrow. But once in awhile a curious hand will delve beneath the top layer...and disturb the lower levels so the older apples come up into the light in all their strange and forgotten variety...It’s about picking up and replacing the top layer. Yours are the hands that go deeper.” Finally, Youngson guides her readers through the labyrinth of love and loss in our evolution from communal to individualistic society. In the past communities were like “cogs, wheels, brackets, levers, pulleys. Each making their society work according to their skills and precision. Now we are like ball bearings. Complete in ourselves and joining other ball bearings only to form shapes, which suit our purpose.” An emotional affair occurs when two people “have approached a level of intimacy that would make the [spouse] feel excluded and diminished.” Guilt “implies knowing what is right and choosing the opposite path,” while stumbling is doing a wrong thing believed to be right. Whether you walk, row, scavenger, or stumble, Meet Me at the Museum! #SummerReading
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Meet Me at the Museum
Patricia R. - 6 years 1 month agoI found this to be well written and very enjoyable….. I have lent it to friends who have thanked me for recommending it. Treat yourself to hours of page turning.
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Without meeting in person, two people develop a strong and endearing friendship. I am recommending this book to all of my friends!
Martha O. - 6 years 2 months agoThis is one of my all-time favorite books! The two main characters write letters to one another and develop a deep, intimate friendship in the process. The book is a powerful insight into how relationships are formed and deepened. #SummerReading