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The Museum of Broken Promises
Welcome to the Museum of Broken Promises,
a place of wonder, sadness ... and hope.
Inside lies a treasure trove of objects - a baby's shoe, a wedding veil, a railway ticket - all revealing moments of loss and betrayal. It is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past. The owner, Laure, is also one of those people.
As a young woman in the 1980s Laure fled to Prague, where her life changed forever. Now, years later, she must confront the origins of her heart-breaking exhibition: a love affair with a dissident musician, a secret life behind the Iron Curtain, and a broken promise that she will never forget.
Author
Author
Imprint
Corvus
ISBN
Publishing date
RRP (paperback)
Pages
978-1786495310
2 April 2020
£9.49
416
In 1986, Laure is waiting at a train station in Austria for Tomas to escape the Czech regime.
The story skips forward to Laure in the present day as the curator of The Museum of Broken Promises which displays items linked to love, loss and betrayal. The museum is not really given a storyline.
The story then skips backwards and forwards between
• Communist Prague in the 1980s where Laure worked as a nanny for a wealthy family with considerable political influence and met her first love Tomas
• Berlin in the 1990s where Laure is working in what seems to be a role with MI5 or 6
• Paris where a young American journalist wants to investigate Laure and write an article to build her career
Although the book was a fairly easy read, it felt disjointed
6/10 Annette
An enjoyable read, providing insights into Czechoslovakian history and how people interacted with Western Europe. The shine was taken off by the book starting in line with the title "The Museum of Broken Promises" and then turning to focus on a single story, albeit with a link to the title. Either part would work for me, merging the two was less good. Our discussion raised some alternative / interesting ideas about the motivations of the main characters. 7/10 Anon
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