Meet Me at the Museum

 

Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

Fiction - Epistolary

Published in 2018

Finished on January 8, 2024

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

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 each other. 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?

Several of my friends have read and recommended Anne Youngson's debut novel, Meet Me at the Museum since it first hit the shelves in 2018. I recently read and enjoyed her second novel, The Narrowboat Summer, so I was eager to read this debut with my book group. As with The Narrowboat Summer, I needed to read 50 pages or so before I fell into the story; once there, I didn't want to stop reading. As the book drew to a close, I was not surprised by the turn of events, but they left me feeling unsettled. 

Comparisons have been made between Meet Me at the Museum and Helene Hanff's classic epistolary (and true story) 84, Charing Cross Road. The latter is much shorter, easily read in an evening, and the friendship between Hanff and Frank Doel (the chief buyer for Marks & Co. in London) remains platonic whereas the relationship between Youngson's characters leans more toward an emotional affair.  Tina Hopgood reminds me of the main character in the sappy romantic novel and movie, The Bridges of Madison County, which also examines the life of a unhappy and unfulfilled farmer's wife. And yet, not all women who live and work on farms are dissatisfied. In Riding the White Horse Home, Teresa Jordan's mother lived a fulfilling life as a wife and a mother, but also a "full-fledged business partner in the family corporation." In her memoir, Jordan explains that she believes her "mother found satisfaction in these roles of wife, mother, and business partner, but she had chosen as well, to be something bigger and more complex than any of them: she had chosen to be fully herself. Early on, she had decided not to make sacrifices she couldn't make willingly; from that authentic core, she was able to marry and mother free of martyrdom or guilt." On the other hand, Youngson's main character comes to resent her role on the family farm. Overall, I enjoyed this epistolary work, and look forward to hearing what members in my book group have to say about it. Recommend.

These are some of my favorite epistolaries:

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 by Nancy Turner

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor

Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

Love & Saffron by Kim Fay

The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg

Paris Letters by Janice MacLeod

Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole