Book Review - Katy Hays's The Cloisters
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
Published by: Atria Books
Publication Date: November 1st, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
The Cloisters are located in Washington Heights, sitting on a hill in Fort Tryon Park on the Hudson River it is a world away from the hustle and bustle of New York City. The structure is made up of elements from abbeys in France and Catalonia that incorporate four cloisters, the Cuxa, the Saint-Guilhem, the Bonnefont, and the Trie. There are three gardens containing rare medieval species of plants but most people come to see the Met's collection of 5,000 pieces of medieval art. Illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, stained glass, paintings, and sculptures adorn the Gothic chapel, the Fuentidueña chapel, the Langon chapel, the Romanesque hall, and the Treasury room. With even more treasures contained in the library and archives. This is where Ann Stilwell will be spending her summer. An Early Renaissance scholar from Whitman, a small college no one has heard of in Washington, she had secured a position in the Summer Associates Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art being a glorified intern. It wasn't what she had planned, but it was the only thing that panned out. And it was only for three months. But it was a start. A way to get away from home and its dark memories. When she arrives at the Met they inform her that they no longer have a place for her. She is nothing more than an administrative oversight. She can't believe what she's hearing. She's frozen to the spot. Unable to move when in walks Patrick Roland, the curator of The Cloisters. He's there to inform them that his temporary, and totally unsuitable, associate curator has left him in the lurch. He needs more hands and right there in front of him is Ann. She'll be perfect. And all Ann can think is that it's serendipity, that if she hadn't sat there a moment too long she wouldn't be being swept away from Museum Mile into another world, a sheltered haven of enigmatic curators. Rachel Mondray, the curatorial associate, and Leo Bitburg, the gardener, become her closest friends. When Ann proves adept they decide to bring her into their world of shadowy secrets, rare book dealers, poisonous plants, and, above all, the tarot. The tarot is Patrick's infatuation. But his obsession isn't just academic, he's a true believer, and Ann's discovery of a 15th-century Italian tarot card from a deck previously thought lost changes everything. The power dynamics in the group shift and control is lost and one night things get out of hand and Patrick ends up dead. Any one of them could have done it, but Ann will make sure it isn't her who takes the fall.
I picked up The Cloisters because I have a fascination with the tarot. Not so much it's mystical powers with regard to divination, but the history and the art. Pamela Colman Smith's illustrations for the Rider-Waite Tarot deck are iconic. You would most likely recognize them even if you knew nothing about tarot they are that famous. So while I am more into the practical side of tarot, the mystical side, especially in fiction, is irresistible to me. And the marketing for The Cloisters leaned into this dark academia vibe with a supernaturally aided power play via tarot. In fact Katy Hays went so far as to actually include Ann Stilwell's Guide to Reading Tarot with pages and pages of details about the Ferrara Deck. The major and minor arcana are laid out over twelve pages with associated gods and planetary rulers and detailed descriptions of the illustrations and their meanings. So I have to ask, if the tarot was seemingly so important why is it nothing more than a MacGuffin? You do not write the rules for an entire tarot deck to have that deck be a red herring! That just makes no sense. And yet that's exactly what this book did. The cards don't matter, it's just the shiny object that everyone wants because they think it will bring them power. It literally could have been anything. Hell, they're surrounded by medieval artifacts, why wasn't it a chalice? Go all Indiana Jones! Because the tarot brings baggage, it brings expectations, and none of those were met. There's nothing magical here other than a well told story about four people manipulating each other to see who comes out on top. Words are magic, so I don't need a promise of magic that is never fulfilled because now I feel cheated. I feel so let down. And I can't tell if it's because Katy Hays had other plans for when she outlined the book and what she ended up writing or it if was all an act of misdirection. A way for these sociopaths to justify their behavior by saying it's fate. By claiming the mystical when it's just the mundane. The Cloisters themselves gave such a sense of place, a sense of something bigger than them while still being precious, that I wish the actions of the characters matched the setting. Look to Rosemary's Baby. There is the sense of place, the wish fulfillment, and then the devil. This does show evil but it's not enough to save it from a failure to deliver. I can't help thinking that if Riley Sager was to do a rewrite, bring in a little more of Hill House, that this could be perfection. As it is, it's an incomplete deck lost to time.
