A correspondence between two people defy the ages. Seemingly written in the present day the lovely way in which the lady writes to her friend has an old fashioned feel to it and his struggles to translate his reply to English has an almost awkward but charming feel to it. Emotional journey of the underlying question of what this will be. But a calm, almost lazy meander through whatever will evolve. It does have it's highlights and excitement but overall I found myself dreaming and hoping for the meeting as the title says. 5 stars for sheer melt the heart loveliness.

I loved this. Such a gentle friendship, and such a treat to have an epistolary novel in this day and age. I felt myself composing replies to Tina and Anders as I read, commenting or offering my own observations. So good, too, to read of older protagonists.

What a wonderful, touching story. It's full of warmth, love, and gentle humour. It focuses on two people in their later years - Tina, a farmer's wife who lives in Bury St Edmunds, and Anders, a curator at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark. Tina writes a letter to the museum enquiring about the Tollund Man, the name given to remains discovered of a man from the Iron Age, whose body has been recreated and exhibited at the museum. The letter is addressed to someone else who has died, and it is Anders who replies in his place. These missives are the start of an epistolary romance, though neither person truly knows it is happening. They enjoy looking forward to the other's letters, with each one becoming more personal, so Tina and Anders feel they know each other completely without having ever met. Their letters are so tender, their words so meaningful, you just want to pick up pen and paper and start writing to someone (although they do end up sending each other emails, so they don't have to wait so long to hear from each other). Then one day Tina's letters change in emotion and she tells Anders she can no longer write to him. He is distraught - what has happened in Tina's life to make her act this way?

This book was such a refreshing change to anything I've read recently, and it puts your faith back into true old-fashioned romance.

The promotional blurb accompanying this title appealed to me because it referred to letter writing and Scandinavia, two themes guaranteed to arouse my curiosity. That it also concerned the development of a profound friendship between two people who knew each other only because of words on paper was simply, for me, a delightful bonus.

Meet Me at the Museum is 70-year-old British author, Anne Youngson’s debut novel. Prior to her entry on to the literary scene she worked at senior level in product development for a major car company, and has since supported many charities in governance roles, including becoming Chair of the Writers in Prison Network.

Her tale of obligation, loss of self and a fourth century mummified corpse discovered on the Jutland peninsula centres on the lives of two people who, on the face of it, seem to be utterly mismatched. He, Anders Larsen, the cerebral curator of a museum in Silkeborg. She, Tina Hopgood, a hard-working farmer’s wife from Bury St Edmunds. But fate and a bog body bring them together, enabling them to develop a rich, empathetic bond. They find they are alike in many ways: both have grown-up children, both have experienced painful losses, and both quietly survive each day without truly living.

Their gentle philosophising and shared memories become a necessity to them. Anders ponders beauty and violence, while Tina reflects on her love of poetry – in particular, Seamus Heaney’s The Tollund Man. At one point a merman is mentioned, and I half expected us to drift into the realms of magical realism, but no, these characters are way too pragmatic to believe in the existence of such creatures.

Meet Me at the Museum is an epistolary story of love and selflessness. Not only do the words of Anders and Tina lift them above long-held feelings of monotony and despondency but they fill each other with hope for the future. They put a smile on the face of this reader, too.

A Man, a woman and a bog man

Tollund Man: the mummified and perfectly preserved body of a man, probably the victim of a ritual sacrifice over 2,000 years ago and discovered in 1950 in a peat bog near Silkeborg in the Jutland Peninsula, Denmark

The Woman: Tina Hopgood, probably late 50s or early 60s, living on a farm in Suffolk. Married for over forty years, not particularly happy at this juncture, and mourning the loss of her dearest friend and soulmate, Bella, who recently died of cancer. Tina and Bella had always shared a fascination with Tollund Man and had vowed to visit the museum in Silkeborg where the remains are on display.

The Man: Anders Larson, probably of a similar age and curator of the Silkeborg Museum. He is grieving the loss of his wife who committed suicide.

Anne Youngson’s debut novel consists of a series of letters between Tina and Anders. Initially, the letters are rather formal as Tina makes enquiries about a possible visit to Silkeborg, but as the correspondence develops both Anders and Tina slowly reveal more and more to each other, their regrets, their dreams, their similarities, their insecurities, their problems, their families. Inevitably, as they get to know each other, they draw closer together as their letters to each other take on a deeper meaning. But nothing runs smoothly forever, and to reveal more would be to spoil the story.

The author follows in the footsteps of the author Margaret Drabble and the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney in featuring the Tollund Man in their writings. It is a gentle, beautifully written and relaxing read. I think it will be more appreciated by women than by men but is way, way above being categorised as chick-lit. I give it three stars.

Bennie Bookworm

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

This debut novel by Anne Youngson is not my normal kind of book. Tina is grieving for her friend Bella when she decides to write to the Professor who dedicated his book on the Tollund man to her and her childhood friends. Professor Glob had passed away some years before but Tina’s letter receives a reply from Anders, the curator at the museum.

Meet Me at the Museum is a beautifully observed story told in the form of letters between the Suffolk farmers wife and the Danish museum curator. Their bittersweet tales deal with the minutiae of their lives: the farm, the museum, grandchildren, music etc. This is a quietly gentle book exploring the innermost thoughts of two middle aged people realising that their best years are behind them.

It sparked my interest and did make me google Tollund Man and I discovered the real history of the man in the bog. Youngson has crafted an interesting mix between fact and fiction in this novella.

All the way through the story I was completely drawn in by the simplicity and beauty of the relationships, between Anders and Tina but also the way they describe interactions with their respective grown up children. Ultimately I found the ending quite disappointing, but that may say more about me and my expectations than the book itself. For me it took an otherwise excellent four star book down a notch.

Advance Reader Copy supplied by Net Galley and Doubleday in exchange for an honest review.

UK Publication Date: May 17 2018. 224 pages.

Meet Me at the Museum is a sweet & adorable story that is told entirely through letters between Tina (living in Bury St. Edmunds) and a museum curator in Denmark, Anders (working at a museum in Silkeborg).
Throughout their exchange they slowly start to get more emotionally involved and even possibly fall in love! Until Tina decides to drops a tiny little bombshell, that she's married! They carry on writing to each other and Tina hopes that ones day she'll meet Anders, and just maybe she'll go meet him at the museum.
Lovely epistolary novel!

This was a nice idea but it was very descriptive and slow on action. People do not put so much detail in a letter, and some of them were boring. Also, it is hard to believe that anyone would have such a lengthy correspondance in this day and age without seeing an image or hearing a voice. However, I did warm to the characters and would have liked to have seen a more positive ending.

I think Meet Me At The Museum will be a Marmite book - readers will either love it or dislike it intensely.

Sadly I disliked it, although I very much wanted to like it as the epistolary premise was interesting to me. However, I found that the letters between trapped wife Tina Hopgood and Anders Larsen, a lonely museum curator, were sometimes moving but were more often dull. Theirs is a journey of self discovery and friendship but self discovery can often be dull except to those people whom it directly affects.

Meet Me At The Museum has received glowing comments from other writers and will probably appeal to readers of Joanna Cannon, for example. At a pinch it falls into the new 'uplit' genre. Thank you NetGalley and Penguin for the opportunity to read and review it.

Tender, poignant and beautiful. I loved this book from start to finish.

A book of letters between Tina, a farmers wife in England, and Anders, curator of a museum in Denmark.
Although they have never met, they share more in their letters with each other than they do with their own families.
Some of the letters were more interesting than others, and I did struggle to keep reading to the end of the book.

Good to know that the epistolary novel is thriving even in the 21st-century! Tina Hopwood writes a speculative letter to the Tollund Man Museum in Silkeborg in Denmark recalling how, as a teenager, she and her friends were so enthusiastic about the well preserved discovery of an Iron Age sacrificial victim in a peat bog. The letter is answered by Anders Larsen, the current curator of the museum, and they begin a long correspondence during which many things happen and both their lives change. At the same time, they become more involved in one another’s lives moving from acquaintances, to friendship and, finally, to the possibility of becoming partners.

Tollund man is thought to have been sacrificed although the reasons why are speculative. This is significant because Tina and Anders have both made sacrifices. Tina is a farmer’s wife, hard-working, dedicated but also aware that she has somehow missed out on life in comparison to her flamboyant friend, Bella. She is married to the farm and to a husband, Edward, but in that order.

Anders has lived his life with the depressed Birgitt who finally succeeded in killing herself. He realises how his dedication to this and to the dry history of the museum has limited his horizons. Both of them also have what are, occasionally, needy children presenting with issues and dilemmas of various kinds.

What’s good about the book is the slow self-realisation which the letters bring for both Tina and Anders as they explore the past and the present while finding out more about one another. That’s interesting because Tina, in particular, is not an entirely reliable narrator, inclined to misjudge people and sometimes to make assumptions. She thinks she knows how the world works but is also conscious that she has lived too sheltered a life to be certain.

As they exchange letters, they become less formal in address and more inclined to talk about their feelings, something which they clearly find difficult in other contexts. The contexts in their daily lives are contrasted. Tina lives in a messy farmhouse while Anders’ apartment is more like something out of an upmarket IKEA catalogue but both feel an attachment to the meanings and emotions connected to small, not valuable, things. The Iron Age, Denmark and East Anglia are well described but when Tina goes, early in the morning, to visit Warham Iron Age fort driving through Thetford and Swaffham she is heading almost due north and she will not need sunglasses or have to worry about whether she is the kind of person who owns some!

There’s a nod in the direction of technology when they agree that their letters can be sent as email attachments (still to be downloaded and savoured) but their growing intimacy is presented as accidental. Anders has no wife and it is only a string of convenient events involving Farmer Edward and the tarty widow, Daphne Trigg, which open the window for ultimate resolution!

The book’s weakness is also its strength. Presenting Tina authentically means that she is something of a ponderous writer and possibly there could be more distinctiveness in style between her letters and those of Anders but that is worth persevering for in the interests of the unfolding storyline and there’s no doubt that the reader does get drawn into the lives of both families.

By the end of the book, there is no impediment to the couple meeting and it seems likely that, in good time, they will but, probably wisely, that is left to the reader’s imagination!

(This book is to be published in May 2018. I received a review copy via NetGalley from the publishers, Penguin and Random House.)

Beautifully written and very unusual.. Lovely to read a love story from this point of view and I liked the ending too, very human and real

Told in letter format this book gentle tells its story whilst managing to pack a mighty punch in the topics covered.
It is a gentle book in many ways, and sensitivily told but gripping.
The local East Anglian setting was an added bonus for me and I felt the writer knew and loved the area.

Epistolary novels are not my favourite style. When they work they can be remarkable but when they don’t (and this happens often) they can ruin what might otherwise be a successful narrative. In Anne Youngson’s tale a woman in her sixties writes to a Danish scholar at the Silkeborg Museum, home of the prehistoric Tollund Man with whom her school class had corresponded many years ago. She writes from a feeling of isolation, disillusioned with her life as a wife, mother and grandmother on a working farm in Bury-St-Edmunds and uncertain of her decisions. Unfortunately, Professor Golb has died and she receives a polite response from his successor Anders who is now curator. His reply sparks a thoughtful and tender correspondence on life, death, love and choice as two people describe their everyday lives and find comfort in the serene expression of a man dead for more than 2000 years.
It’s a sweet story that meditates on grief and sorrow and small joys but it just didn’t ring true. I didn’t believe the letters and because of this I couldn’t believe in the people who wrote them or the lives they lived. Two people striking up an accidental relationship in writing with so many stories to share felt incongruous and their writing style was too similar to allow either to stand alone as a fully-formed character. Anders’ story in particular just didn’t feel real; as though it had been created to support the more nuanced and convincing narrative told by Tina whose life was more realistically mundane.