Short reviews - part IV

Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan 

"The Museum of Broken Promises is a beautiful, evocative love-story and a heart-breaking exploration of some of the darkest moments in European history.

Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated - a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby's shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest. Laure, the owner and curator, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.

Prague, 1985. Recovering from the sudden death of her father, Laure flees to Prague. But life behind the Iron Curtain is a complex thing: drab and grey yet charged with danger. Laure cannot begin to comprehend the dark, political currents that run beneath the surface of this communist city. Until, that is, she meets a young dissident musician. Her love for him will have terrible and unforeseen consequences. It is only years later, having created the museum, that Laure can make finally face up to her past and celebrate the passionate love which has directed her life."

There is a lot to reflect on in this novel, especially memories and what they can do to us. In general, the flashbacks in Prague feel a bit long. The time was different, but Laure's naivety can sometimes feel a little annoying. On the other hand, dreams of love belong to the youth, rightly so. It is interesting to follow how Laure develops between the three, time periods that make up the book. In a way, she is three different persons, with the older one being the most appealing.

It is a story about memories and their impact on our lives.  Patrick Modiano often writes about memory and oblivion in his novels, and asks: "What do you really remember about an event thirty years later - and what do you just think you remember?"

How well it fits in here. Is Laure's memory reliable? Does she interpret the events differently today, with life experience? Laure's memories have kept her imprisoned for the past thirty years. Would it not be better to forget, as many advised her to do? What kind of life do you have if you live on memories based on shattered dreams? 

Contemplating Adultery, The secret life of a Victorian Woman by Lotte and Joseph Hamburger

"'And yet if you knew what rapture it would be for me to minister in any way to the pleasures of a man who loved me as I desire...'

In the early 1830s Sarah Austin, trapped in a loveless and dutiful marriage, falls in love with a man she has never met - a German prince, author of the bestselling book she is translating into English. Their romance by letter becomes increasingly intimate as she eagerly confides the secrets of her inner life - her disappointment in marriage and her hunger for affection.

Thus begins one of the more extraordinary relationships ever recorded its erotic tension and passionate tenderness heightened by the danger of discovery as every nuance of emotion is committed to paper."

This is a fascinating account of the mind and thoughts of a middle-class Victorian lady. Living in a loveless marriage might have contributed to her fascination and love for a man, prince and romantic adventurer, which she had never met. I could not help thinking the couple was very much ahead of their time; a sort of online dating. They wrote physical letters, today we write online. But, with the correspondence, they really got to know each other. That is if they were true to what they wrote. 

The story of how these long-lost letters were found is also interesting. In short, they belonged to the Varnagen collection. During World War II, officials at the German State Library in Berlin moved manuscripts and other documents to a Benedictine monastery in Silesia. This area was ceded to Poland in the postwar settlement. The collection was considered as a war loss until in the 1980s archivists became aware that the collection was kept in the Jagiellonian University at Cracow. 

And then of course... How could I not read a book having as cover The Day Dream by Dante Gabriel Rosetti?

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

"This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them...

In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever know will turn to ash...

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all..."

The Iliad hardly mention any women, I think only Helen (of course) and Briseis. Natalie Haynes has corrected this and gives us a dramatic account of what happened to the women surrounding the fighting men. We meet the goddesses and mortals and get the Troyan war from another angle. It is exciting and thrilling as well as terrifying. Women always fare badly in wars. I love the Greek sagas and their gods and goddesses, and it was nice to meet them again in all their menacing ways; they are after all utterly selfish, revengeful, intriguing, beautiful and ugly, always trying to interfere with both immortals and mortals. Most of the women mentioned in the novel I had heard about, but there are a few new acquaintances. We know what happened to some of the women, but with others Haynes gives us a tale of another life.