Meet me at the museum by Anne Youngson

With the exception of 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, I don't really enjoy novels based on the exchange of letters and this book didn't get to join my very short list of exceptions.

The problem I had with this particular book was that I found the whole premise hard to believe. Tina is a lonely farmer's wife whose best friend has recently died, and she regrets the fact that they never managed to visit the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark. She and her friend Bella had often spoken of taking a trip to see the Tollund Man, whose Iron Age remains were found remarkably preserved in a peat bog in 1950.

People often dream of visiting the Trevi Fountain or the spring cherry blossom in Japan, but it's not very often I hear of someone spending half a lifetime dreaming of a visit to a long dead body. Tollund Man was found with a rope around his neck so the poor man was the victim of murder and now his remains lie in the museum for all to see. People gawping at the actual remains of another human being is also something I don't approve of, but that's a rant for another day.

Anyway, Tina writes a random letter to a Professor who was associated with excavating the remains when they were found, and unsurprisingly he is long dead, but the present curator is kind enough to respond to the letter. Under normal circumstances, that would be the end of that. If Tina wants to go to the museum, it's open every day and she can find out all the information she needs from the website. Job done. But no, she writes back then he writes back again, and within the space of just four letters they are exchanging all their personal problems that would have taken hours to write and cover many sheets of writing paper. I think the writer came to this same realisation herself as she quite quickly has them move to e-mail so that at least will save them a bit on postage.

There are sub-plots on both sides of the North Sea to give some extra interest, but I continued to find the mix of family problems and Iron Age history a bit hard going and I'm afraid this wasn't really a stand-out book for me.

Comments

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