The Cloisters
ISBN: 9781804990032
Description
Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, hoping to spend her summer working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she is assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art. Drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, Ann happy to indulge some of their more outlandish theories, including the museum's curator who is fixated on tarot and the real possibility of predicting the future. But when Ann discovers a mysterious, once-thought lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.
Reviewed on 28th April 2024
This was another new book I picked up based on the attractive cover art, and though it turned out not to be my normal thing, I’m glad I did.
It’s the story of a young woman looking for what to do next after college, and to escape her hometown. It’s the story of a friendship she develops with a colleague. And it’s a story of the knowable and the unknowable. There’s a lot of psychology of the characters that someone more knowledgable than me in that area could die into.
I felt lost a few times while reading - the passage of time flowed oddly or I had to go back and check whether I had missed something, and sometimes I had, sometimes I hadn’t. It’s quite a slow burn for a lot of the book, and I sort of feel like the darkness leads to a dampening of emotion.
I did enjoy this visit outside my normal genres, but I don’t think it’s the sort of reading material that could sustain me full time and I suspect it will be a while before I try something similar again.