The Cloisters by Katy Hays

Book Blurb
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 . . .

My Review
To start the year I am reviewing an ambitious and fascinating debut novel from writer and Art History Professor Katy Hays. The Cloisters is a dark and slow burner novel set in New York in the eponymous museum. Ann Sitwell, comes from a small town to New York for a summer internship at Metropolitan Museum of Art, but a change of circumstances sees her at The Cloisters, a museum of Medieval and Early Renaissance Art. Working with the charming curator Partick and his assistant Rachel, Ann finds herself drawn into a world of fortune telling, tarot cards, ambition and power.

I have been desperate to read this book since learning about it last year so was very grateful to Bantam Press for sending me an early copy to review. I fell completely in love with this book, from it’s glorious setting, to the art history, to the fascinating characters and the dark and suspensful plot line. Katy Hays beautifully brings this to life in her descriptive prose, capturing the beauty of museum, a place of peace and learning but also a place of darkness, where ambition and power fester under the vaulted ceilings. I felt like the museum had an otherworldly feel about it, separate from the rush and bustle of New York, whilst still being in the city centre. The juxtapostion of the religious architecture and works of art with the research of fortune telling and the occult by Patrick, Rachel and Ann works well, a crossing of worlds so to speak, reflecting Ann’s journey over the summer.

Into this cloistered world comes Anne, just graduated from college, naive having lived in a small town and grieving from the loss of her father who died a year earlier. She is drawn to the beautful and sophisticated Rachel, assistant to the curator Partick Roland, who takes her under her wing, and a friendship blossoms. Both women want to be part of Patrick’s world and follow his obsession into trying to find a Tarot Deck that could be linked to the d’Este family who ruled during the Renaissance, an obsession that takes them to the edge of their friendship and tests it’s limits. I enjoyed watching Ann grow in confidence, to start to live her life and take control of her destiny so to say. It was fascinating to see how the secrets and lies slowly unravelled, spiralling out of control towards an ending that was superb. It leaves you pondering as to whether your future is predestined and can be read, or if the choices you make are just that and you make your own future.

Having studied Art History this book was perfect for me; I wanted to be part of Anne, Rachel and Patrick’s world, to study in the library and take part in the research. This is a truely supberb debut novel, excelently plotted with underlying menace and suspense, and characters who seem to shift and change throught the book. Deliciously dark with more than a hint of the Gothic this is a richly detailed and seductive read. I know it’s just the start of the year but I think this will be on my list of best books of 2023.

I’d like to thank Izzie Ghaffari-Parker from Penguin Random House for my copy of this book in return for my honest review.