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“I find I do not often have anything to say which it would interest other people to hear. Though other people talk about things I am not interested in and I am happy to listen, so maybe it is not others’ lack of the will to listen but my lack of interest in speaking that is at fault.”

 

Pied oystercatcher, Lindisfarne Bay, Hobart. May 2021.

Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson 

I shall now repeat the opening sentence from an earlier review. The greatest challenge for the epistolary novel is to create engaging characters who engender enough sympathy (or at least interest in their lives) to hold a reader's interest. Anne Youngson has achieved this admirably in Meet Me at the Museum.

This lovely novel consists of an exchange of letters between two very different people at a similar age in life. The correspondence between the practical farmer's wife Tina in England's East Anglia and the precise, scientific widower who is a curator at Silkeborg Museum flourishes as they find the other fulfilling a function that to that point neither had realised that they needed.

There is a gentleness here that hints at deeper emotions. Yet, there is an organic way that these two older strangers emerge to serve as allies to help each other reconcile with their grief (one for her best friend, another his wife) and move on with the next stage of life.

When I started reading this, I expected a light, slightly twee bit of fluff extolling sprightly wrinklies. Instead, what I found was an eloquent and moving tale of the potential for growth and happiness at all stages of life. A beautiful little book that I couldn't recommend more highly!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2
 

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