“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

Comments

If you want to be loved, be lovable.

Henry admires the view.

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.

Here I have tried my hand at the homemade sepia-toned photo. I wasn’t happy with the way that the sun had washed out some of the colours in the original, so had a bit of a fiddle because I like the look on Henry’s face, and didn’t want to pass on posting it. I have a tip for those of you burdened with the great, unceasing weight of parenthood. I have a new recipe, in the vein of the quick microwaved chocolate cake . Get this, microwaved potato chips . I gave them a run on Sunday, Henry liked the so much I did it again last night. Tonight, I shall be experimenting with sweet potato. I think that the ground is open for me to exploit opportunities in the swede, turnip, carrot and maybe even explore in the area of pumpkins. Radical, I know. I’m a boundary-pusher by nature. It's pretty simple, take the potato. Slice it thinly (it doesn't have to be too thin, but thin enough). Lay the slices on the microwave plate, whack a bit of salt over the top and nuke the buggers for five minut

This will hurt me...

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