Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Meet Me at the Museum
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1948?
WEBSITE:
CITY: Oxfordshire
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
70-year-old debut author’s novel sold in major deal 48 hours after she submits it to publisher
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | nb2010004948 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/nb2010004948 |
| HEADING: | Youngson, Anne |
| 000 | 00726cz a2200169n 450 |
| 001 | 8185440 |
| 005 | 20180626103737.0 |
| 008 | 100222n| azannaabn |n aaa |
| 010 | __ |a nb2010004948 |
| 035 | __ |a (Uk)007716129 |
| 040 | __ |a Uk |b eng |e rda |c Uk |d DLC |
| 046 | __ |f 1947-09-30 |2 edtf |
| 053 | _0 |a PR6125.O946 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Youngson, Anne |
| 670 | __ |a When Rover met Honda, 2008: |b t.p. (Anne Youngson) |
| 670 | __ |a Meet me at the museum, 2018: |b t.p. (Anne Youngson) data view (Anne Youngson is retired and lives in Oxfordshire. Meet Me at the Museum is her first novel.) |
| 670 | __ |a Email from publisher, received June 25: (Anne Youngson was born September 30, 1947 in London, England. She is one of the editors of When Rover met Honda.) |
PERSONAL
Born September 30, 1947, in London, England; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Received degrees from Oxford University and University of Birmingham. Oxford Brookes University, M.A. (with distinction).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Worked previously for Land Rover as a Chief Engineer and a MD of the Special Vehicle Operations.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Throughout her earlier adulthood, Anne Youngson specialized in the field of motor engineering. She has since retired and turned her efforts toward writing. While she published two books on motor engineering with co-workers in the past, the release of Meet Me at the Museum marks Youngson’s official debut.
She explained her motivations for creating the book to Daryl M., a writer on the Los Angeles Public Library website. “I have had a photo of the face of the Tollund Man, a preserved Iron Age body from a bog in Denmark, on my wall for some time, with the poem about him written by Seamus Heaney,” she said. “I finally read a book written about the Tollund Man in the 1960s, and realized it was dedicated to some schoolgirls who would now be in late middle age.” She concluded: “The thoughts that occurred to me, when I looked at the Tollund Man’s face, I realized might also be occurring to one of these girls, and this was the starting point for the book.”
Meet Me at the Museum focuses partly on two protagonists: Anders Larsen and Tina Hopgood. When Tina was a schoolgirl, she collaborated on a class letter to a college professor who held considerable knowledge regarding the Tollund Man. In response, the professor penned a book about the subject and dedicated it to her class. Now she is a housewife who, in her boredom, sends the professor a new letter. Yet the professor has died many years ago, leaving no one but Anders to reply to the letter Tina has sent. What blooms from there is not only a close friendship, but the chance for Tina to begin her own life anew. “Luminous, affecting, and delightful, this study of humans … will please those who want more than thrill-a-minute reading,” remarked Xpress Reviews contributor, Barbara Hoffert. On the Guardian Online, Hannah Beckerman wrote: “Youngson’s debut offers hope for change in its tender exploration of what it means to have experienced a life well-lived.” My Weekly website reviewer Karen Byrom stated: “At seventy years’ old, author Anne Youngson truly understands that love affairs are not just for the young and that sex is only a part of deep and abiding passion.” Byrom added: “She brings the experience of years to the story with such depth and understanding, it’s hard to believe this is her debut novel.” Shelf Awareness website contributor Amy Brady wrote: “Beautifully written and deeply moving, Meet Me at the Museum is a superb–and tenderhearted–debut that will interest anyone who’s ever questioned how they became the person they are today.” Heller McAlpin, a writer on the NPR website, commented: “Meet Me at the Museum is a touching, hopeful story about figuring out what matters and mustering the courage to make necessary changes.” On the Star Tribune Online, Kim Ode said: “Meet Me at the Museum is gently provoking, delving into how we interact with our children, our spouses, our communities, but mostly with ourselves.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2018, review of Meet Me at the Museum.
Xpress Reviews, June 15, 2018, Barbara Hoffert, review of Meet Me at the Museum.
ONLINE
Greene & Heaton, http://greeneheaton.co.uk/ (October 24, 2018), author profile.
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (May 27, 2018), Hannah Beckerman, “In brief: A Moment of Grace; Meet Me at the Museum; The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature,” review of Meet Me at the Museum.
Los Angeles Public Library website, https://www.lapl.org/ (August 15, 2018), Daryl M., “Interview with an Author: Anne Youngson,” author interview.
Macmillan website, https://us.macmillan.com/ (October 24, 2018), author profile.
My Weekly, https://www.myweekly.co.uk/ (June 22, 2018), Karen Byrom, review of Meet Me at the Museum.
NPR, https://www.npr.org/ (August 7, 2018), Heller McAlpin, “Bonding Over Bog Bodies In ‘Meet Me At The Museum,'” review of Meet Me at the Museum.
Reading List, https://readinglist.click/ (October 24, 2018), “70-year-old debut author’s novel sold in major deal 48 hours after she submits it to publisher.”
Shelf Awareness, http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ (April 16, 2018), Amy Brady, review of Meet Me at the Museum; (April 16, 2018), Amy Brady, “Anne Youngson: The Intimacy of Letter Writing,” author interview.
Star Tribune Online, http://www.startribune.com/ (August 15, 2018), Kim Ode, review of Meet Me at the Museum.
5
70-year-old debut author’s novel sold in major deal 48 hours after she submits it to publisher
More about the book!
70-year-old writer Anne Youngson has proved it is never too late to get your big break in books.
The British writer has had her debut novel snapped up by major international publisher Transworld Publishers – just 48 hours after it was submitted!
Transworld editorial director Jane Lawson has pre-empted UK and Commonwealth rights including Canada to the book, calling it ‘the gentlest, most humane and emotional’ novel.
The novel, titled Meet Me at the Museum, is set to become the publisher’s lead fiction title for summer 2018.
Youngson told the Bookseller: ‘It is astonishing and thrilling in equal measure to have my first novel selected for publication by the team at Doubleday.
‘My agent advised me not to hesitate to accept their offer and she was right. I have been so impressed with the passion and professionalism they have brought to the process (all new to me) of moving towards publication.
‘I feel truly privileged to have this opportunity to develop another career, and I plan to take full advantage of it.’
Transworld has built the careers of some big name authors in the past, including Jilly Cooper, Catherine Cookson and Terry Pratchett, and also works with Dan Brown, Bill Bryson, Lee Child, Richard Dawkins, Ben Elton and Tess Gerritsen. Recent successes for the publisher include Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train.
https://readinglist.click/sub/70-year-old-debut-authors-novel-sold-in-major-deal-48-hours-after-she-submits-it-to-publisher/
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LAPL Blog
Interview with an Author: Anne Youngson
Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch Library, Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Author Anne Youngson and her debut novel, Meet Me at the Museum
Anne Youngson had a long, successful career in the motor industry before taking an early retirement to focus on her writing. She is currently studying for a PhD at Oxford Brookes. Anne and her husband live on a farm in Oxfordshire, where they have a two-acre garden open to the public. She has three grandchildren to date. She also recently agreed to be interviewed by Daryl Maxwell about her debut novel, Meet Me at the Museum, for the LAPL Blog.
What was the inspiration for Meet Me at the Museum?
I have had a photo of the face of the Tollund Man, a preserved Iron Age body from a bog in Denmark, on my wall for some time, with the poem about him written by Seamus Heaney. Both the photo and the poem inspired me to think of enduring, and being present and yet absent, of patience and tolerance. I finally read a book written about the Tollund Man in the 1960s, and realized it was dedicated to some schoolgirls who would now be in late middle age. The thoughts that occurred to me, when I looked at the Tollund Man’s face, I realized might also be occurring to one of these girls, and this was the starting point for the book.
Are Tina or Anders, or any of the other characters, inspired or based on specific individuals?
The characters are entirely from my imagination. They created themselves on the page as they wrote to each other.
How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
The published version is close to my first draft; nothing major changed. I found there were thoughts and experiences Tina and Anders had not shared with each other that I wanted them to talk about—their grandparents, for example—and so I put more letters into the final draft. The only thing I took out was a letter that was devoted to something topical (the UK vote to leave the European Union) because in editing I found I resented this intrusion of current affairs into their relationship.
Epistolary novels are rather uncommon these days. Why did you choose this format to tell Tina and Anders’s story?
The dedication in the book about the Tollund Man is in the form of a letter and it seemed natural that Tina would pick up a pen, at this point in her life when she is trying to make sense of it, and write back to the Danish Archaeologist who was the author. I did not necessarily intend to continue in the same way, but the format turned out to offer a great deal of freedom to explore the themes of the book. I am now a fan of epistolary novels because they also allow the reader freedom to judge the characters and their motivation seeing them, as it were, in conversation with someone else.
Have you ever been to Denmark to see the Tollund Man? If so, what was the experience like for you?
I have visited Silkeborg, which is where the Tollund Man’s body is displayed. It was a very moving experience. He is curled up, as if asleep, in a quiet side room. I felt a little like an intruder into his world, and was relieved that there was no one else there at the time. A crowd around him might have diminished his dignity, which is apparent even in death.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
I am consuming short stories for a project I am working on, and have Tenth of December by George Saunders, A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin and You Think it, I’ll Say it by Curtis Sittenfeld stacked up, to dip in and out of. Waiting to be read are two recent novels—Circe by Madeline Miller and The Wanderers by Tim Pears. I am looking forward to this as it is the second part of a trilogy, The Horseman was the first, evoking rural life in Britain in the early twentieth century and the writing is beautiful, the story slow to evolve but absorbing.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
I read whatever my local library had available, and it is hard to pick out one book, but I loved C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories and then moved on to Rosemary Sutcliff. The Eagle of the Ninth was the most exciting book I can remember reading.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
I was lucky in my parents. They never tried to control or judge what I was reading, either to condemn it as too trivial or to censor it as too adult. So I was free to explore Enid Blyton at the one end and Iris Murdoch at the other.
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
Anne Tyler has been a long-time favorite and very influential, as she writes so beautifully and sparingly about domestic lives. Elizabeth Strout is up there, for the same reasons. I have always loved Penelope Fitzgerald, whose novels are both sharp and dreamlike. Kate Atkinson’s books are a joy to read and it feels to me as if she is having fun writing them, which is also important. In complete contrast, I love the nineteenth-century novels that set out to tell a story, in detail and completely. I would have to pick Charles Dickens as the master of the craft.
What is a book you've faked reading?
I don’t remember doing this deliberately, but I do sometimes imagine I have read some classic novels, only to find out I haven’t. This happened to me most recently with E.M. Forster’s,Howards End. It turned out I’d only seen the film.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
I recently bought a memoir by Penelope Lively, Life in the Garden, for the title and the glorious cover. The contents didn’t disappoint, either!
Is there a book that changed your life?
I would have to say The Bog People by Professor Glob, the book that led to Meet Me at The Museum. It was only by delving into the detail around the Tollund Man that I was able to see my way to creating the story, which has given me a chance to have another profession, as a novelist, instead of sinking into idle old age.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
I become excited about, and re-read and recommend so many books it is hard to pick just one, but I think it would have to be Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It is so perfectly balanced, like the tight-rope artist Pettit who inspired it. And it has much to say about society, in a subtle and engaging way.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
If this means which book that I have read do I wish I still had the thrill of discovering for the first time, then it would have to be Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone. This is such a glorious story and I do re-read it, but like all mysteries, it is never quite the same after the first reading, when the plot has become familiar. If it means which book have I read that I am looking forward to reading again for the first time, I think it would be The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
The perfect day for me would have to be in a garden, and probably my own garden here in Oxfordshire, with the sun shining and just enough people to make it possible for everyone to join in the one conversation. This probably means no more than ten, which would have to be my immediate family, which is six of us, discounting the grandchildren who are too young to have any conversation but would need to be there to make the day perfect, leaving four places. I would choose to invite one of my writing friends, one of my reading friends, and one colleague from my previous career, which had nothing to do with writing or reading. The last place would go to a complete stranger, as there is nothing so stimulating as finding out about someone you have never met before.
What are you working on now?
I am finishing off a collection of short stories in which I have been experimenting with how stories start, what the first sentences and paragraphs can do to shape and influence. I am also beginning work on another novel.
Anne Youngson is retired and lives in Oxfordshire. She has two children and three grandchildren to date. Meet Me at the Museum is her first novel and is being published around the world.
Anne Youngson
Agent: Judith Murray
Anne had a long and successful career in the motor industry after finishing a degree in English from Birmingham. She most recently worked for Land Rover, as Chief Engineer, Defender replacement and, finally, MD of the Special Vehicle Operations. Having taken early retirement, she worked as an Enterprise Advisor to schools, before joining a small consultancy team, working on major skills development programmes for a range of clients.
After leaving the motor industry, she began to take writing more seriously. She did an Undergraduate diploma at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education and an MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes, achieving a distinction in both. She co-wrote two books on the Motor Industry with ex-colleagues: WHEN ROVER MET HONDA, a collection of case studies on collaborative working with the Japanese, and BRITISH LEYLAND MOTOR CORPORATION 1968-2005, published in 2015.
Anne is married, with two adult children and one grandchild to date – two more on the way. Her husband ran a plant nursery until recently, and she has a 2-acre garden open to the public through the National Garden Scheme. She has supported many charities in governance roles, including Chair of the Writers in Prison Network, which provided residencies in prisons for professional writers, until it lost its Arts Council funding.
She is now studying for a PhD at Oxford Brookes. The creative part of the qualification will be stories which explore how to begin. Her debut novel MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM will be published by Transworld on 17th May 2018.
Youngson, Anne: MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Youngson, Anne: MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723432/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=b8894ed1. Accessed 17 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723432
1 of 2 9/17/18, 10:10 PM
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Youngson, Anne. Meet Me at the
Museum
Barbara Hoffert
Xpress Reviews.
(June 15, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews- first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Youngson, Anne. Meet Me at the Museum. Flatiron: Macmillan. Aug. 2018. 288p. ISBN 9781250295163. $23.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250295156. F
[DEBUT] Trying to get a better understanding of her life, disaffected English farmwife Tina Hopgood writes Professor P.V. Glob, who 50 years previously had dedicated his book The Bog People to her and her classmates after they write him a letter. The professor is long gone, but Anders Larsen, curator at the museum that houses the Tollund Man, among other significant artifacts of the bog people, responds courteously. Thus begins a series of increasingly engaged and engaging emails, as Tina, married to the self-absorbed man who got her pregnant while at school, thus ending her aspirations, struggles to articulate what she wants even as the widowed Anders blossoms with their exchanges. As they move from nicely rendered discussions of archaeology to more personal revelations, particularly about their families, Anders encourages Tina to visit the museum. Clearly, Tina senses there's something more for her in the world, and if she's not quite ready, she's on her way. The book builds quietly but surely to her turning point, which, realistically, is not an explosion but a next solid step.
Verdict Luminous, affecting, and delightful, this study of humans, ancient and modern, will please those who want more than thrill-a-minute reading.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hoffert, Barbara. "Youngson, Anne. Meet Me at the Museum." Xpress Reviews, 15 June 2018.
Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A543990850 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c032581e. Accessed 17 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A543990850
2 of 2 9/17/18, 10:10 PM
In brief: A Moment of Grace; Meet Me at the Museum; The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature – review
Patrick Dillon’s moving account of love and loss, letters charting an unlikely friendship, and what we can learn from the great Russians
Hannah Beckerman
Sun 27 May 2018 07.00 EDT
Viv Groskop: ‘part memoir, part self-help manual’
Viv Groskop: ‘part memoir, part self-help manual’.
A Moment of Grace
Patrick Dillon
Ebury Press, £12.99, pp224
In 2015, shortly after celebrating her 50th birthday, theatre producer Nicola Thorold attended a routine GP appointment about bruises that had appeared on her legs following a virus that had been difficult to shake off. She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia and died a year later. In A Moment of Grace, her husband, the writer and architect Patrick Dillon, constructs a narrative as structurally intricate as it is affecting. Alternating between the story of Thorold’s treatment, the couple’s relationship and the aftermath of her death, it is a profoundly moving and impassioned account of a 28-year romance: “Love was the hut in which we found shelter.”
Meet Me at the Museum
Anne Youngson
Doubleday, £12.99, pp224
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Read more
Youngson’s epistolary novel follows the correspondence between Tina Hopgood – a farmer’s wife living in Bury St Edmunds – and professor Anders Larsen, a curator at a Danish museum. What begins as an inquiry about the Tollund Man, and Tina’s thwarted plans to visit the museum, soon develops into a much-valued friendship. As the two enter into detailed discussions about history and archaeology, as well as sharing intimate details about their family lives, the book becomes a thoughtful and gentle meditation on buried passions, regrets, love, grief and loneliness. But Youngson’s debut offers hope for change in its tender exploration of what it means to have experienced a life well-lived.
The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature
Viv Groskop
Fig Tree, £9.99, pp224 (paperback)
In her introduction to The Anna Karenina Fix, comedian and journalist Groskop acknowledges that while she has two degrees in Russian, she is nonetheless a “shambling amateur” with a desire to wrestle Russian literature back from the “very clever people who want to keep it for themselves”. Her focus is on what it “can teach us about life without us actually having to live through the things described”. As such, we have a book that is part memoir, part self-help manual and part breakneck tour through some of the greats (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Pushkin and Chekhov), making for an enthusiastic and highly knowledgable jaunt through 150 years of literature.
To order A Moment of Grace for £9.99, Meet Me at the Museum for £11.04, or The Anna Karenina Fix for £8.49, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
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Meet Me At The Museum | Anne Youngson
By Karen Byrom
Meet Me At The Museum book cover
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REVIEWED BY KAREN BYROM
At her home in East Anglia, 63-year-old farmer’s wife Tina Hopgood sits down to write a letter to Professor Glob at Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, author of a book on Tollund Man, the ancient mummy found in a peat bog and now exhibited at the museum.
Tina feels a special connection to Tollund Man – the book Professor Glob wrote was dedicated to her and her classmates, and she and her friend Bella had talked many times over the years of going to see him.
But now Bella is dead and the opportunity is gone.
Tina recognises that her marriage is not as loving as it should be
Professor Glob, too, is dead, but the curator of the Museum, Kristian Larsen replies to Tina and gradually the two build up a correspondence by letter and email.
It soon becomes apparent that they have more in common than a shared interest in Tollund Man, a love of history and a passion for nature.
Widower Kristian grieves for his late wife, a fey creature whom he could not save from her own demons.
Tina recognises that her marriage is not as loving or as fulfilled as it should be – yet she cannot bring herself to leave her husband.
Tina has been looking to Tollund Man for lessons in patience and self-sacrifice – but what if instead it is Kristian who holds the answers.
A self-effacing man, he would never presume to advise anyone – yet it is to him Tina turns more and more.
And he in turn confides in her when his daughter gives him cause for anxiety.
Thoughts, hopes and dreams…
As the letters and emails fly back and forth, the two share their thoughts, hopes and dreams. And yet they make no plans to meet. For that might break the spell…
Told exclusively in letter form, Meet Me At The Museum is a beautiful, lyrical love story, played out with words and paper. Both Tina and Kristian are wonderfully engaging characters, empathetic in their need to explore a world beyond their own four walls; innocent in their longing for something more than that which life is currently offering them; charming in their bewilderment as their friendship progresses beyond the strictly platonic.
At 70 years’ old, author Anne Youngson truly understands that love affairs are not just for the young and that sex is only a part of deep and abiding passion. She brings the experience of years to the story with such depth and understanding, it’s hard to believe this is her debut novel.
Let’s hope for many more.
Meet Me At The Museum book cover
Meet Me At The Museum is published in hardback by Doubleday, RRP £14.99
Other romances you may like:
One Summer In Italy
Days of Wonder
Lark Song
Meet Me at the Museum
by Anne Youngson
What does one's life look like on paper? In hindsight? Through the eyes of a dear friend? These are the questions at the heart of Anne Youngson's wonderful epistolary novel, Meet Me at the Museum. It begins with a tragedy: Tina, a middle-aged farmer's wife living in rural England, loses her lifelong best friend, Bella, to cancer. When Bella dies, so does Tina's dream to travel to Denmark to see the "Tollund Man," human remains from the Iron Age on view at a museum there. The anthropologist who discovered the remains visited Tina and Bella's school when they were children, and the Tollund Man became something of a mythic figure for the pair; to embark on a trip together to see him would be something like a joint religious pilgrimage.
But without Bella, Tina cannot bring herself to make the journey. To discover why she feels this way, she writes a letter to the museum's curator. Doing so is an exercise in self-discovery--a kind of psychological self-analysis--and she doesn't expect a response. But she receives one.
Anders replies to her missive because he can't help but correct some of the facts she gets wrong--he is at heart, after all, a museum curator obsessed with factual precision. But he doesn't write with hostility. On the contrary, he's intrigued by Tina's perspective on the Tollund Man and her vibrant word choice throughout her letter (his first language is Danish, not English). Thus begins a correspondence that lasts more than a year.
This novel, Youngson's first, is structured entirely by their correspondence. With each letter, we learn more about Tina and Anders--about their families, their interests, their uncertainties about life. We watch as their intimacy grows and, along with it, a shared openness about what they regret most about their pasts and what they hope for the future. This is the rare novel that explores the nuances of adult relationships with clear-eyed insight.
Their relationship can't be entirely categorized as either romance or friendship. That's the other question at heart here: Just how do they feel about each other? A detailed answer would spoil the novel's ending, but it's safe to say that what develops between them is at once beautiful, innocent and dangerous--it just depends on how one looks at their relationship, and who's doing the looking. The peripheral characters--Tina's husband, Anders's children--are present in most of the letters, but their views on the relationship are revealed slowly, in pace with the protagonists' self-revelations about how they feel.
What makes this novel truly sing is Youngson's talent for writing highly individualized characters. From Tina we get expressive and well-written letters representative of a woman who's spent a lifetime reading but who has relied mostly on her imagination to travel the world. From Anders we get a perspective that befits a museum curator who is accustomed to travel, cultural experiences and life in a city. Yet there's nothing stereotypical about either correspondent. They transcend their status and cultural backgrounds by revealing surprising thoughts and complex opinions--indeed, their mutual sensitivity to the world and to each other's feelings is, at least in part, what makes each of them interested in the other.
This novel is also about the evolution of families. As they muse about their children's successes and failures--and delight in the birth of grandchildren--Tina and Anders's letters become investigations of generational differences and proper parenting techniques. We learn that despite their best intentions, both live with lots of uncertainty about whether they made the right choices regarding their kids. And now that their children are grown, they hesitate to offer advice for fear of steering them in wrong directions. In these moments, the novel is perhaps at its most poignant.
The two also discuss their regrets about marriage. Anders's wife, we learn, suffered greatly from mental illness and died a mere 18 months before his correspondence with Tina begins. He is still reeling from the loss. Tina married young--she became pregnant out of wedlock and was guilted by her family into marrying the baby's father. Her life ever since has been one of sacrifice, she writes to Anders. Neither letter writer ever comes across as overly sentimental, however--Youngson has given us two compassionate psychologies that feel as if they belong to real people.
By the book's end, Tina and Anders's reflective letters reveal a relationship built on a shared feeling of disbelief at having reached middle age. It's not the aging itself that troubles them--both are quick to explain to the other that they have remained in good health. But both are questioning for the first time some of their life's biggest decisions. It's only in writing to each other that they come to truly understand their pasts, and they're not entirely happy with what they discover about themselves. Beautifully written and deeply moving, Meet Me at the Museum is a superb--and tenderhearted--debut that will interest anyone who's ever questioned how they became the person they are today. --Amy Brady
Flatiron Books, $23.99, hardcover, 288p., 9781250295163, August 7, 2018
Flatiron Books: Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
Anne Youngson: The Intimacy of Letter Writing
British author Anne Youngson worked in the car industry for many years, but she always wanted to be a writer. Meet Me at the Museum (Flatiron Books), her debut novel, fulfills that life-long dream. Written as a series of letters between an English farmer and a museum curator in Denmark, the novel sings with compassion and self-reflection. Youngson, mother of two and grandmother of three, lives in Oxfordshire, England.
You began your career as an engineer in the car industry. What led you to novel writing?
I always thought of myself as a writer; I loved the challenges of the job and the day-to-day business of working with other people, but I was always thinking of stories, and how I would describe what was going on around me, as if I was writing it down. Whenever I had time and a story I thought I could use, I would write it down, but I never considered this as something I could do for a living. It was not until I began to take courses and meet other writers and, finally, after I retired from full-time work, that I realized a novel was something I could aspire to write.
Where did Tina and Anders, the novel's main characters, come from?
It is impossible for me to say where they came from. I knew quite clearly the sort of person I imagined Tina to be, her background and attitudes. As I wrote in her voice it became more and more familiar until I could be sure I understood just what she would feel and say in any situation. At first Anders's voice was a precise and factual counterpart to Tina's, but the story of his wife changed him into someone who was also caring and compassionate, perhaps slightly bewildered. The letter format helped to shape the people they show themselves to be as they write.
What inspired you to use letter writing as the structure of this book?
I began the book with a letter from Tina, looking back towards the end of her life and thinking about the girl she had been. When I started, I did not plan for the whole book to be in the form of letters, but the first letter needed an answer, and then it was only natural that Tina would write back. I did consider moving away from this format to narrating the story in a conventional way, but I felt it would put a distance between these two people, even if I had continued to use the first person. So I carried on, and found I was able to explore everything I wanted to say about them, their lives and their ideas, through the letters.
This novel challenges a straightforward, overly simplistic notion of intimacy. Without giving too much away, what inspired these characters' evolution as friends?
I believe intimacy, and the deepest friendships, are built on a shared understanding of what the other person thinks and feels so that a word or a phrase is enough, where someone outside the circle of two might need sentences of explanation and still not be on the same page. Julian Barnes put this much better than I can, when he wrote about his wife's death and regretted "the loss of shared vocabulary, of tropes, teases, short-cuts, in-jokes, sillinesses, faux rebukes, amatory footnotes." Through their letters Tina and Anders are developing this closeness, this shared vocabulary.
Tina first writes to Anders about Tollund Man, a preserved human body from the Iron Age that actually exists. The Tollund Man, discovered in a bog, comes up many times throughout this book, and I was continually impressed by your knowledge of his remains. Are you interested in the Tollund Man or Iron Age history beyond what you write about here?
I have always loved museums, and of course there are many Iron Age (and older) artifacts in museums, but it was a picture of the Tollund Man's face that inspired me, because of the miracle of its preservation and its wise and gentle expression. The bodies found in bogs show us that the people who lived then, and used the bowls and coins exhibited in so many museums, looked very much like us and therefore remind us--this might seem obvious but it is easy to lose sight of--that they were human, as we are, and must have had similar joys and fears, in a completely different environment. I have read extensively around bog bodies and, of course, visited the Tollund Man, which was a deeply moving experience.
Have we lost something, as a society, by moving to electronic ways of communicating and away from writing letters by hand?
I think we have. I envy anyone who still has letters written by family members who are no longer here; my own family was, for several generations, in the army, which means they moved, from country to country and house to house, and anything not essential to daily living was thrown away to make moving easier. So I cannot "hear" the voice of my grandparents or know what concerns they had, what news they shared with each other or their friends and family. I have a close friend who recently lost her husband and, because they spent some time apart before the arrival of the Internet, she has letters he wrote to her, and this is her greatest source of consolation. We may all stay in touch better than we used to do, because it is so easy to send a line or two by e-mail, but there is an intimacy to letter writing which has been lost.
Both characters seem to learn a lot about themselves through the act of writing. What are your thoughts on this practice in the real world? Can writing help us to understand ourselves better?
I write because I want to make sense of the world, and while words may not work the same for everyone, I do believe that using language to express what we feel and think and how we respond to the experiences we have can be enormously helpful. For many years I was involved with a charity that worked with prisons, setting up residencies for writers. Time and again, this program demonstrated how prisoners, given the encouragement and the guidance on how to construct their thoughts, could articulate feelings about themselves and, often, about their crimes and its victims, in ways they had never done before. Even those with relatively low literacy skills could find enough words for a poem that expressed what was going around in their heads. Of course, Tina and Anders are not criminals, but they do need a way to move forward, and writing gives it to them. --Amy Brady
Bonding Over Bog Bodies In 'Meet Me At The Museum'
August 7, 20187:00 AM ET
Heller McAlpin
Meet Me at the Museum
Meet Me at the Museum
by Anne Youngson
Hardcover, 272 pages
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Meet the charmer of the summer, an epistolary novel about two strangers dismayed by where their lives have taken them. Dissatisfied farmer's wife Tina Hapgood and lonely museum curator Anders Larsen initially connect over a shared fascination with the miraculous Iron Age archaeological find known as the Tollund Man, but their relationship soon deepens as they begin to excavate their own chosen life paths in a series of letters.
The act of articulating their feelings in writing helps clarify their thoughts and creates a lifeline that lifts them out of the bog of their circumstances. Tina was pushed into marriage by a pregnancy; after 40 years she's regretting the options she never had the chance to consider. Recently widowed Anders works at Denmark's Silkeborge Museum, which houses Tollund Man. Gradually, their salutations progress from "Dear Mrs. Hopgood" and "Best Wishes" to "My dear Tina" and "All my love." Deep into their 18-month correspondence, Anders writes, "Our letters have meant so much to us because we have both arrived at the same point in our lives. More behind us than ahead of us. Paths chosen define us." But also: "Enough time to change."
Meet Me at the Museum introduces a septuagenarian first-time British author who could be a poster child for change: Anne Youngson took early retirement from a successful career in the auto industry to pursue her lifelong desire to write. Her lovely debut novel recalls heartwarmers like Kent Haruf's Our Souls at Night, and two longtime favorite epistolary novels, Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road and Jean Webster's 1912 classic, Daddy-Long-Legs.
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Youngson captures two distinct characters through their thoughtful, empathetic letters: Anders lives mostly indoors, Tina outdoors. His house is spare, modern Danish design; her old English farmhouse is cluttered with objects that weigh her down. His initially dry and fact-filled letters become increasingly confiding and warm. She regrets her outbursts of bitterness over a life "sacrificed ... to the social standards of my parents and their peers" and to the farm, which her husband cares about above all else, including her. A rare hiccup: Despite Anders' qualms about his English, there's no sense that he's writing in other than his native tongue.
While extolling the possibility of change at any age, Meet Me at the Museum also makes a strong case for the generous give-and-take of old-fashioned, substantive letters. Even when Tina and Anders opt for the convenience of typing their replies on laptops and sending them as email attachments, their letters are far more carefully composed than the quick lines typically dashed off in emails or texts.
There's nothing breezy, cursory, or flirtatious about these missives. Tina and Anders describe activities and outings that define the contours of their days; with time, they open up about their spouses and grown children. They write about what music means to him and poetry to her — including Seamus Heaney's poem "The Tollund Man." Both have recently suffered losses: Her best friend, with whom she'd long hoped to visit Tollund Man; his strange, haunted wife. They share regrets and concerns, and debate in depth the ramifications of his daughter's surprise pregnancy and her initial decision not to tell the baby's father.
'Meet Me at the Museum' is a touching, hopeful story about figuring out what matters and mustering the courage to make necessary changes.
Tina's letters are filled with vivid details about "the relentless timetable of food production," including tending chickens and slaughtering pigs. When she scorns the absurdities of pheasant hunts, Anders helps her to see them differently, as rituals. She describes picking raspberries, noting that no matter how careful she is, she always finds some she's missed. "Another life, I thought, might be like a second pass down the row of raspberry canes," she writes. "There would be good things I had not come across in my first life, but I suspect I would find much of the fruit was already in my basket." Raspberries become their private shorthand for second chances. Anders replies, "Unlike you, I feel I have overlooked far too many of the fruits in this life I have."
Meet Me at the Museum is a touching, hopeful story about figuring out what matters and mustering the courage to make necessary changes. At one point, Anders writes encouragingly to his despairing penpal, "Please do not be angry with the circumstances of your life ... nothing is so fixed it cannot be altered." Both the substance and very existence of this impressive late-life debut bring to mind a nugget of advice imparted to a friend by his wise therapist: "Life's open-ended if you can get there."
Meet Me At the Museum
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Meet Me at the Museum
By Anne Youngson. (Flatiron, 312 pages, $23.99.)
Anne Youngson, at age 70, has written her debut novel. Her age may account for its depth, with thoughtful passages that younger authors likely could not conjure — or, if they could, might fall prey to presenting them with more theater, to helpfully ensure that they’re not overlooked.
Youngson’s approach is more mundane, like much of life, which gives her observations their particular credibility.
The novel is a series of unlikely letters between Tina, an English farmer’s wife, and Anders, a museum administrator in Denmark. Both are of an age where there is “more behind us than ahead of us.”
Tina writes seeking some information about Tollund Man, an Iron Age man who was found in a Danish bog in 1950, astonishingly preserved with an especially serene expression on his face. She and a friend, Bella, always had meant to visit, but didn’t, and now Bella has died. Anders replies with anthropological information, adding a passing reference to how we regard the dead given his own wife’s death.
Their correspondence unexpectedly continues, each writer finding safety in sharing their thoughts with an anonymous reader. You may well imagine where this correspondence will end, yet it’s never made clear. And complications emerge.
But it’s the exchange of their reflections on life that proves so peacefully compelling. Such as this passage from Tina: “Whenever I pick raspberries, I go as carefully as possible down the row, looking for every ripe fruit. But however careful I am, when I turn round to go back the other way, I find fruit I had not seen approaching from the opposite direction. Another life, I thought, might be like a second pass down the row of raspberry canes; there would be good things I had not come across in my first life, but I suspect I would find much of the fruit was already in my basket.”
How subtle. How perceptive. How mundane. The cover blurb makes an apt connection with “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.” As with that lovely novel, “Meet Me at the Museum” is gently provoking, delving into how we interact with our children, our spouses, our communities, but mostly with ourselves.
KIM ODE