Meet Me at the Museum: A Novel
Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award
“The charmer of the summer.”
—NPR
“Warm-hearted, clear-minded, and unexpectedly spellbinding, Meet Me at the Museum is a novel to savor.”
—Annie Barrows, co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
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?
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Community Reviews
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
268 pages
What’s it about?
This short novel is comprised of letters back and forth between two people later in their lives. Tina Hopgood lives on an isolated English farm with her husband and grown children. Tina has been fascinated by the Tolland Man since her youth. She decides to write to a well-known professor working at the museum with a question about the Tolland Man. She comes to find that the professor she is seeking is dead, but begins an unlikely correspondence with Danish anthropologist Anders Larsen. Through these letters both characters explore the choices made in their respective lives, and the consequences of those choices.
What did it make me think about?
The choices we make in our youth affect the rest of our lives. Yet, we often make them without much thought towards the future . This novel explores the choices both Tina and Anders have made and asks- "Are we ever too old to begin again? ".
Should I read it?
I thoroughly enjoyed this short novel. The first few pages were slow but it picked right up and I was quickly engrossed in the story. Tina and Anders are characters I will miss. This is a thoughtful novel that may resonate more with a more mature reader.
Quote-
"Our letters have meant so much to us because we both have arrived at the same point in our lives. More behind us than than ahead of us. Paths chosen that define us. Enough time to change."
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