Our readers have asked us to share books and reviews that we think you would enjoy. While we figure out how to give this its own “page” on our website, we offer three book reviews this week from subscribers Kathleen Canrinus, Kay Bancroft, and Sandy Conant Strachan.
Meet me at the Museum by Anne Youngson – with a review by Kathleen Canrinus, author of The Lady with the Crown: A Story of Resilience, published in 2022 when she was 77.
As a lifelong and now 78-year-old reader, I seek out books written by older authors or those with older characters—books like The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. Meet Me at the Museum is another such book. Anne Youngson was 70 when her debut novel was published in 2018. In this epistolary work, a farmer’s wife from the English countryside and a museum curator at Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, both disappointed later in life, begin a soul-baring correspondence. In letters that start with hers expressing a fascination with Tollund Man—housed at Silkeborg Museum—they reflect on loss, loneliness, sacrifice, grief, family, marriage, choices, dreams, and second chances. Tollund Man, the fifth century corpse of a man preserved in a bog, is as much a character in the story as the correspondents’ family members.
In an interview, Youngson said, “As you get older, you are not so anxious about who you are and what people think of you. It’s liberating. Actually, I’m a big fan of old age. I think everyone should experience it.” I am a big fan of her attitude as well as her writing.
Thoughtful, slow-paced, and touching, there are no fireworks in her novel. “When I sit down to write to you, it seems like all the strings holding my subconscious mind together come loose and let my subconscious leak out,” writes the farmer’s wife. Like the characters in Meet Me at the Museum, I too reflect on just such topics as those in the letters—”where life went, if we spent it the way we meant to have spent it or would have chosen to spend it if we had known when we made our choices what the other choices were.” Therein lies the novel’s fascination.
Olive Again: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout (Book 2 of 2, 2020 – Book 1 “Oliver Kitteridge, 2008) – Review by Kay Bancroft
I became intrigued with Olive when I read Book 1 and was delighted to learn that a sequel had been written two years ago. At that time, Olive, a retired schoolteacher, and her husband Henry, a retired pharmacist, lived in the small seacoast town of Crosby, Maine. They are in their 70s and beginning to feel the effects of aging. Olive, though good-hearted, is a crusty, opinionated lady who has difficulty with relationships.
In “Olive Again” she is in her early 80’s (like me) and, despite her fierce longing for independence, she is forced to make some major changes in her life. Her personality, though still abrupt, begins to soften as she becomes more aware of how her actions affect others. Olive spends are great deal of time reflecting about her past. She seldom sees or talks with her only child, Christopher, who lives in New York with his growing family. Olive surmises that she was a poor mother and starts making tenuous attempts to mend their relationship.
We also get to meet many of the townspeople that Olive has interacted with and see their view of her. It is clear to see that everyday life, no matter where it is, contains a lot of drama. Everyone has their own unique story to tell.
The reason I value this book is because the author understands the concerns of the elderly and expresses our feelings so well. She describes intimate and often embarrassing situations that Olive experiences, often with humor, which is so essential! I appreciated that Olive’s fears were discussed—especially her fear of death. (It is not necessary to read Book 1 first, although it is very interesting.)
If you have a book that has been especially meaningful to you, please email one of us and share the title, a short summary and why you recommend it!