Tag: literary fiction

Book Review: Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

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Meet Me at the MuseumAbout the Book

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: Hardcover, ebook (224 pp.)    Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 17th May 2018  Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Meet Me at the Museum on Goodreads

My Review

In her debut novel, written in epistolary form, Anne Youngson not only gives the reader an insight into the thoughts and feelings of Tina and Anders but explores the act of letter writing itself.   What emerges from their correspondence is that the act of transforming thoughts into words can have a therapeutic, even cathartic, quality.  In one of her early letters, Tina writes, ‘Please be aware, I am writing to you to make sense of myself.’  Later she confides, ‘I don’t know where these thoughts come from except that when I sit down to write to you it seems as if all the strings holding my conscious mind together come loose and let me sub-conscious leak out.’

Both Tina and Anders seem to be  trying to make sense of things in their own mind and in this respect their letters are an unburdening and at times have a confessional quality.  For example, Anders writes at one point: ‘You have made it possible for me to talk of things I have never spoken of before, and to understand what has been hidden.’

Of course, Tina and Anders are fortunate to have found a correspondent so in tune with their own reflective, thoughtful nature.  As Anders says, ‘We have written at length and thoughtfully, and to do this, we have both had to read the letters we received in a thoughtful way.’

Tina and Anders share an explorative, questioning approach to their lives and experiences in their letters although Anders is initially more analytical and less willing to share his emotions than Tina.  However this changes in the course of their correspondence.  The way they open and sign-off their letters reflects a growing informality and affection and a sense of the mutual support, perhaps even dependence, the letters provide.  As Tina confides at one point, ‘I do not know how I would cope without your letters.’

Meet Me at the Museum is a tender story of friendship but also of regret, disappointment and the questioning we probably have all done at some time about life decisions we’ve taken – wondering about the road not travelled, so to speak.  As Tina says, ‘We have been talking to each other about where life went, and if the way we each spent it was the way we meant to have spent it or would have chosen to spend it if we had known when we made our choices  what the other choices were…’

The conclusion left this reader not disappointed but slightly sad.  However, I’d like to think that the ending I hoped for did take place in some alternative literary universe.

You can find out about the Silkeborg Museum on their website and more about The Tollund Man here.

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In three words: Intimate, reflective, moving

Try something similar…Dear Mrs. Bird by A J Pearce (read my review here)

About the Author

Anne Youngson worked for many years in senior management in the car industry before embarking on a creative career as a writer. She has supported many charities in governance roles, including Chair of the Writers in Prison Network, which provided residencies in prisons for writers. She lives in Oxfordshire and is married with two children and three grandchildren to date. Meet Me at the Museum is her debut novel, which is due to be published around the world.

Connect with Anne

Website  ǀ  Goodreads

Throwback Thursday: The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme originally created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a fabulous book I reviewed when it was first published in August 2017, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting (translated by Paul Russell Garrett).  The book was published in paperback earlier this week, with a new cover design.  You can find purchase links below.   The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is also the Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for October 2018.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme PBAbout the Book

Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery – he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother.

But he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death – a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all.

Edvard’s desperate quest to unlock the family’s tragic secrets takes him on a long journey – from Norway to the Shetlands, and to the battlefields of France – to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood and finding your own self, a beautifully intricate and moving tale that spans an entire century.

Format: Paperback  (416 pp.)                                     Publisher: MacLehose Press
Published: 1st October 2018 [10th August 2017]  Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  | Waterstones | Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Sixteen Trees of the Somme  on Goodreads

My Review

The death of Edvard’s grandfather, Bestefar, and the facts that come to light as a result, change everything for Edvard. They see him embark on a journey that will take him away from the isolated Nowegian farm where he has grown up to the Shetlands and France as he searches for the truth about the cause of his parents’ death and the four days afterwards when he was missing. It also stirs up vague fragments of memories – a scent, the sound of a voice, the texture of a fabric, a discarded toy – that don’t make any sense but convince Edvard that he needs to find out more about his parents’ death.

‘Because there was something about Mamma and Pappa’s story that was stirring, quietly, like a viper in the grass.’

As is often the case when unearthing secrets from the past, Edvard is forced to confront unwelcome possibilities and make agonising choices. Edvard’s search reaches back in time to WW1 and WW2, bringing to light painful facts from the past – death, injury, separation and betrayal – but also revealing stories of courage, determination and devotion. It provokes questions such as whether it is better sometimes not to know the truth, to be careful what you wish for, that actions have consequences even if unintended, and the fulfilment you seek may be closer to home than you think.

I found the story absolutely enthralling and I loved the fantastic sense of place created in each location. From the author’s beautiful, heartfelt descriptions, I felt as if I could look out my own window and see the farm in Norway laid out before me.

‘Redcurrant bushes dense with berries, the flag-stoned path leading to the swimming hole at the river, the creek which cut through the potato fields and disappeared from sight behind the barn. The fruit trees, the pea pods that dangled like half moons when we got close to them, so plentiful that we could fill up on them without taking a step. The dark-blue fruit of the plum trees, the sagging raspberry bushes just waiting for us to quickly fill two small plates and fetch some caster sugar and cream.’

In particular, I loved the way the author captured the remote beauty of the Shetlands and the sense of a community where everyone knows what goes on, who’s arrived on the ferry, whose car has just passed them on the road. The author roots the various parts of the story each in their distinct time, in particular, using popular music as the background to Edvard’s journey. (I get the impression the author is a bit of a music fan, perhaps attracted at some point in his life to a girl by the way she browses in a record shop.)

At times, Edvard feels as if he has come to a dead-end in his search but still he continues searching for clues, motivated by curiosity but also by a sense of obligation to the dead – those known to him and those victims of two world wars unknown to him: ‘I wanted to be someone the dead could rely on.’

As the author of the left-field hit, Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way (now also an activity book), it’s no surprise that wood is at the heart of the story. It is part of the plot in a number of ways – in fact, more and more ways as the story progresses – but it is also celebrated in the book for its form, history and beauty. Similarly, there is real regard for the craftsmanship that can fashion a piece of wood into an object of beauty, utility or religious symbolism.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme has a compelling, enthralling story line with wonderfully atmospheric settings and well-developed characters. I was completely immersed in Edvard’s search for the truth about his parents’ death; like him, all the time fearing the dark secrets he might uncover but compelled to find out nonetheless. A fantastic book, highly recommended.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers Quercus Books/MacLehose Press.

LarsMyttingAbout the Author

Lars Mytting, a novelist and journalist, was born in Fåvang, Norway, in 1968. His novel The Sixteen Trees of the Somme was awarded the Norwegian National Booksellers’ Award and has been bought for film. Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way has become an international bestseller and was the Bookseller Industry Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2016.

(Photo credit: Goodreads Author Page)

Connect with Lars

Website | Goodreads