Museums are usually the crucibles of natural history and the embodiment of our cultural heritage.
They collect, preserve and interpret.
They are the storehouses of knowledge.
They can also be rather idiosyncratic.
For within this delightful novel we find
the museum of the improbable, the museum of unexpected consequences , the museum of broken promises.
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.
As the cover note says "the museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest."
Elizabeth Buchan uses this as a backdrop to an skillyfully crafted, beautifully written story of love amid the restraints of communist dictat and cruelty.
The characters become like puppets on a string, even more marionettes manipulated by love's obsessives and disappontments.
Set on two timelines, today"s Paris and the grey, bleak days of Prague in Czechoslovakia under Soviet influence in the mid 1980s.
This is Laure's love story, found and lost and then pursued to its bitter sweet denouement.
Laure is the owner and curator of the
Museum of Broken Promises is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest.
Laure, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.
This is Laure's love story, found and lost and then pursued to its bitter sweet denouement.
It is an unusual piece of fiction writing, flitting between past and present.
They collect, preserve and interpret.
They are the storehouses of knowledge.
They can also be rather idiosyncratic.
For within this delightful novel we find
the museum of the improbable, the museum of unexpected consequences , the museum of broken promises.
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.
As the cover note says "the museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest."
Elizabeth Buchan uses this as a backdrop to an skillyfully crafted, beautifully written story of love amid the restraints of communist dictat and cruelty.
The characters become like puppets on a string, even more marionettes manipulated by love's obsessives and disappontments.
Set on two timelines, today"s Paris and the grey, bleak days of Prague in Czechoslovakia under Soviet influence in the mid 1980s.
This is Laure's love story, found and lost and then pursued to its bitter sweet denouement.
Laure is the owner and curator of the
Museum of Broken Promises is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest.
Laure, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.
This is Laure's love story, found and lost and then pursued to its bitter sweet denouement.
It is an unusual piece of fiction writing, flitting between past and present.