Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

A few years ago, Meet me at the Museum was pegged by NPR as “the charmer of the summer.”

That peeked my interest, and when I learned this debut novel was written by the author at 70 years old, well I knew I had to see if the publisher would grant me a copy.

I was delighted when they did just that

Shameful, but two years later, I finally got around to reading this book and found it much more than just a “charmer”.

But wait, I’ll start at the beginning.

Meet me at the Museum is written as an epistolary novel (one of my favorite style of books) and opens with a women’s letter to a Danish museum inquiring about the The Tollund Man*, whose well preserved corpse is exhibited there. I had never heard of The Tollund Man, who lived during the Iron Age, 250 BC, but I learned about him (it?) through this book. This initial inquiry turns into a correspondence between a widower and a farmer’s wife in Great Britain.

These two older adults are both in very different, and difficult, places in their lives, and through the correspondence they develop an candid and close friendship.

The lost art of letter writing is alive and well in this slim novel book. Both characters open up slowly — but eventually they drop their formal addressing and are soon using each other’s first names – Anders and Tina. They are also slow to reveal their past stories and reluctant to share their dis-satisfactions with their current lives — the walls of their privacy, slow to break down.

I found the ways they shared and expressed their viewpoints of both their own and others thoughts and behaviors insightful and often poetic. I kept stopping to mark a passage and would think — what a wonderful way to put that — such as this one.

We should look inside ourselves for fulfillment. It is not fair to burden children or grandchildren with the obligation to make us whole. Our obligation to them is to make them safe and provide them with an education. Karin can do that alone, if she chooses. She owes no one anything else. She owes it to herself to do what is best for her. When I had said this, Mary kissed me. I can’t remember the last time she did that. Or the last time I enjoyed a conversation more.

There are some lovely metaphors in Meet Me at the Museum — such as picking the raspberries in life, and a story of about a Rag Man — both treasures. (Sorry, you’ll have to read it to find out.)

As I read this book, I really enjoyed piecing together these humble character’s lives through their honest and heartfelt correspondence.

This is not a fast-paced, plot-driven novel – it is thoughtful and quiet — rich in depth and language — it was a real reading pleasure.

A digital review copy was kindly provided by Flatiron Books, via Netgalley.

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N.B. Meet Me at the Museum is reminiscent of another favorite of mine Our Souls at Night. (I know I’m getting older, but so many novels are aimed to the under 50 reading audience, and I find myself drawn to books with older, wiser perspectives on life and living

* And now for a little ~~geeky-ness~~ background:

The book was inspired by a poem written by Seamus Heaney – The Tollund Man – which you can read HERE. Mr. Heaney, inscribed part of the poem in the guest book at the Silkeborg Museum (Denmark) in 1973 after he gave a talk on his memories of the Irish bogs where the Tollund Man was discovered.