Impossible Views of the World

June 12, 2017
Ives’s smart and singular debut novel chronicles what turns out to be a big week in the life of Stella Kraus, a petite and observant map expert for a Manhattan museum resembling the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the course of seven days, Stella works through the one-sided residual effects of an affair with an inscrutable colleague being groomed to run the museum. Stella also copes with her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s inappropriate appearances at her work and work functions, eventually taking the matter into her own hands, so to speak. And what about the disappearance of a male colleague? The illustrated map Stella discovers while snooping in his office quickly becomes an obsession as she attempts to determine its provenance by embarking on a sort of scavenger hunt. Ives maximizes her story’s humor with subtlety; a line here and there is enough to call attention to the absurdity of, for instance, the museum’s corporate benefactor’s attempt to secure the world’s water rights. She also isn’t afraid to make her heroine unlikable, which works in the novel’s favor. Ives’s prose and storytelling feel deliberately obtuse at times, requiring readers to slow down to fully immerse themselves in the narrative’s nuances, but the result is an odd and thoroughly satisfying novel.

Part of the appeal of a first-person novel is learning about the main character's true personality--not just what he or she presents. In this audiobook, Stella is at times annoying, maddening, intriguing, and sympathetic, and narrator Cassandra Campbell voices all these shifts wonderfully. Campbell can sound serious or snide, earnest or sneaky, with just an artful adjustment of her voice and delivery. Set largely within a large New York City art museum, the plot--which is billed as a mystery but does not quite deliver on that label--veers off course often and at length. Campbell's narrative skill keeps the listener engaged, but the details weaken the story more than adding to its verisimilitude. Nevertheless, a solid beach listen. L.B.F. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine