Book Review: ‘The Cloisters’ by Katy Hays (murder, betrayal and dark academia in New York City)
You know that moment where you see a cover for a book, you’ve heard nothing about it until that moment, but you just know it’s going to be right up your alley? That’s what happened to me with Katy Hays’ debut, ‘The Cloisters’. The more I read into it, the more convinced I became that it was going to be perfect and it didn’t take much convincing for Sarah to agree that it seemed like a perfect fit for an episode of ‘The Dark Academicals’. It’s literally being marketed as “The Secret History for a new generation” - we can’t ignore claims like that.
While comparisons to ‘The Secret History’ are usually a bit generous, we were spot on about the vibes of this one. A round of applause for us!
You can listen to the full episode right here:
INSERT EPISODE LINK
The Secret History meets Ninth House in this sinister, atmospheric novel . . . the discovery of a mysterious deck of tarot cards lays bare shocking secrets within a close-knit circle of researchers at New York's famed Met Cloisters museum.
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 medieval and Renaissance collections.
There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, each with their own secrets and desires, including the museum's curator, Patrick Roland, who is convinced that the history of Tarot holds the key to unlocking contemporary fortune telling.
Relieved to have left her troubled past behind and eager for the approval of her new colleagues, Ann is only too happy to indulge some of Patrick's more outlandish theories. But when Ann discovers a mysterious, once-thought lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards she suddenly finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.
And as the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide whether she is truly able to defy the cards and shape her own future . . .
Bringing together the modern and the arcane, The Cloisters is a rich, thrillingly-told tale of obsession and the ruthless pursuit of power.
Once Ann arrives in New York and joins Patrick and Rachel in an effort to locate the origin of tarot in Renaissance Italy, there isn’t a huge amount of plot. The novel is suspended in the sweltering heat of summer in NYC, sheltered by the cool, dark museum, and consumed by their work. It’s slow and introspective with nothing definitive to drive you through the novel, but it’s still incredibly compelling - I was completely absorbed by the atmosphere and the unsettling interpersonal drama between Ann, Rachel, Patrick and Leo.
There are conflicts of class, wealth, and belief in the power and magic of tarot. Patrick, a curator at The Cloisters who is putting together an exhibition of the origins of divination, is having Rachel and Ann search for proof that tarot was used for telling the future in the early Renaissance. It delves deep enough into the academia of it to feel like I was there is The Cloisters wading through research, but not enough that I was drowning in an unfamiliar world. All of this is compounded by this overarching feeling of something looming and the tension climbing towards a boiling point once Ann uncovers tarot cards that will make the exhibition.
I know there have been some criticisms that several questions or elements of the novel were left without a concrete, Agatha Christie style reveal of what happened, but I disagree with that. Everything we needed to know was on page and the rest was inferred - there was nothing missing or frustrating for me at all.
‘The Cloisters’ is a dark, compelling and atmospheric debut that brims with dark academia vibes.
Written by Sophie
