REVIEW: The Cloisters by Katy Hays

 

The Cloisters is an actual museum in NYC and plays a central role in Katy Hays' debut novel, as does tarot, mystery and intrigue. The main character is Ann Stillwell, a young woman that has just graduated from a local college in Washington State and is intrigued by the often overlooked edges of the Renaissance Period. She is dealing with the death of her father in a hit and run and has taken an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY for the summer in the hopes that it will help her get into graduate programs. When she gets to NY, she realizes that her job at the Met has evaporated but she lucks out and gets placed in the Cloisters, a "jewel box" museum that is comprised of pieces of monastaries purchased from Europe and rebuilt in NY.

Ann doesn't seem to mind and falls in love with them. Ann's main colleague is Rachel, an Ivy League heiress whose parents are dead. Ann really looks up to Rachel but feels more emotionally attached to Leo, the irascible gardener who grows herbs among other seductive plants in the gardens at the Cloisters. Both Ann and Rachel report to Patrick, the curator who is working at finding tarot cards from the 15th century. 

The novel begins to become intriguing when Patrick suspects that Ann has located a deck of tarot cards he has long sought, causing him to become threatening and controlling.

I initially very much liked Ann. I empathized with her insecurities and her motivations in leaving her small town and coming to NY.  As the novel progressed, I began to dislike and disbelieve her - talk about a unreliable narrator.  I questioned why she really left her town in Washington, leaving a mother that was grieving and needed her. I also wondered if she was coming up with excuses related to fate that were simply a means to justify poor choices. I loved this about this book. I also loved how satisfying the ending was - it had the potential to be a cataclysmic and unrealistic ending, but that was not the case, by far. I enjoyed the exploration of ambition, particularly in young women and what it looked like.  

Definitely a wonderful book.