Book Review: The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan

I am not so fond of my life during a nonsense dictatorship and I am very selective with books about a specific part of the world and those times, but curiosity when it comes to reading can overcome my skepticism and reservations. 

This book by Elizabeth Buchan who does not have direct connections with communist dictatorships or former Central and Eastern Europe caught my attention because of the title, The Museum of Broken Promises. It sounds so extremely romantic and tragic that I left my imagination run wild trying to figure out the many possibilities uncovered by this title. At a certain extent, they were answered, but I had high expectations which were partially met. 

Laure Carlyle is a British-French women who is curating in Paris The Museum of Broken Promises. People bring objects that are reminders of promises that were never kept but it not all broken promises are equal. You need to have a strong story in order to have your objects featured in the museum.

Laure´s story is complex and she is rarely keen to reveal it willingly. Once upon a time, she was an au pair working for an influential Czech family first in Paris then in Prague. The father of the family was active in the pharmaceutical industry but not his qualifications allowed him to freely travel and live in the West, but his trust in the party and the stamp of approval of the secret police. Once in Prague, Laure get involved with the member of a protest rock group, Anatomie and is herself under the secret police observation - as all foreigners were in those countries - and even arrested and almost raped. She will escape but her then boyfriend not although they promised to meet in Vienna and many years after, she is haunted by his memory and searches in vain to hear the rest of the story (after the end of the communist regime, it would have been easy to return to Prague and trace him though).

What I appreciated about the book is the normality of the story. Although the book is based mostly on researches and reading about those times, Buchan succeeded to recreate the ambiance in its normal abnormality, with people refraining from telling the truth or learning to live being tailed by the goons of the secret police. It also has interesting exchanges about the nature of communism and how it was deteriorated by people struggling to build and maintain lavish bourgeois priviledges. 

From the point of view of the story, the connections between the present - the museum - and the old story are not always throughout and sometimes, delved into the Czechoslovak story, I completely forgot that the museum exists. The book is mostly slow paced and I liked it this way, as I´ve read way too many book approaching those times from a very sensationalist Bond-like perspective and it was rarely this way. People had their lived, melted into the requirements of the regime and survived. No drama and heroic outbursts, with some noteworthy exceptions, like the case of Jan Palach who self-immolated as a protest against the dramatic crash of the Prague Spring, mentioned in the book. 

Understandable, the author is like walking on shells but writing with caution about an era and a past one did not live in is a safety belt against exagerations and distorsions. Sometimes, it may be a good idea for the local authors as well.

The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan is a good read, which respects the historical and human complexities of the time, but wished it did more from the literary point of view and story complexity.

Rating: 3 stars