Genre Fiction
![Katy Hays - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BJW381K8.jpg)
The Cloisters: A Novel
A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick
This instant New York Times bestseller that is "captivating in every sense of the word" (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author) follows a group of researchers uncovering a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York's famed Met Cloisters.
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers' more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when she discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a "masterwork of literary suspense that surges to an otherworldly conclusion" (Mark Prins, author of The Latinist).
This instant New York Times bestseller that is "captivating in every sense of the word" (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author) follows a group of researchers uncovering a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York's famed Met Cloisters.
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers' more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when she discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a "masterwork of literary suspense that surges to an otherworldly conclusion" (Mark Prins, author of The Latinist).
Editorial Reviews
"Claustrophobic . . . An underhanded antiques dealer, a sexy Cloisters gardener with a side hustle in poisonous plants, a suspicious death or two, a mysterious centuries-old document written in an obscure language, the sense that no one, not even Ann, is telling us the whole truth-all this adds up to a dense forest of a plot . . . Is this a story of the occult, or a story of ambition, or a tale of one (or more!) murderous psychopaths? The answer is a shock, and it sneaks up on you unawares." -The New York Times
"A story of academic obsession, Renaissance magic and the ruthless pursuit of power. Captivating in every sense of the word." -Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium
"Sultry and sinister . . . Hays's debut teems with sexual tension, the secrets of divination, and scholarly obsessiveness. With a jaw-dropping twist at the end, The Cloisters serves as a warning to us all: we may think we know what life has in store, but fate and fortune tend to turn their own tricks." -Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary
"A moody and suspenseful story . . . Readers will be fascinated by the evocative setting as well as the behind-the-scenes glimpses into museum curatorship and the cutthroat games of academia . . . An accomplished debut." -Publishers Weekly
"A tour de force by an important new voice, The Cloisters begins as a fish-out-of-water story. But as Katy Hays deftly weaves in layer after layer of the occult, art, and academia, it turns into a rich tapestry that speaks to issues of privilege, power, and ambition-and, more than anything, the darkness lurking just inside ivory towers. Virtuosic and incredibly compelling, The Cloisters grabbed me in a way that no book has done since The Secret History." -Rachel Kapelke-Dale, author of The Ballerinas
"A tantalizingly clever tale, laced with surprises as devious as its cast of shadowy scholars, The Clois...
"A story of academic obsession, Renaissance magic and the ruthless pursuit of power. Captivating in every sense of the word." -Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium
"Sultry and sinister . . . Hays's debut teems with sexual tension, the secrets of divination, and scholarly obsessiveness. With a jaw-dropping twist at the end, The Cloisters serves as a warning to us all: we may think we know what life has in store, but fate and fortune tend to turn their own tricks." -Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary
"A moody and suspenseful story . . . Readers will be fascinated by the evocative setting as well as the behind-the-scenes glimpses into museum curatorship and the cutthroat games of academia . . . An accomplished debut." -Publishers Weekly
"A tour de force by an important new voice, The Cloisters begins as a fish-out-of-water story. But as Katy Hays deftly weaves in layer after layer of the occult, art, and academia, it turns into a rich tapestry that speaks to issues of privilege, power, and ambition-and, more than anything, the darkness lurking just inside ivory towers. Virtuosic and incredibly compelling, The Cloisters grabbed me in a way that no book has done since The Secret History." -Rachel Kapelke-Dale, author of The Ballerinas
"A tantalizingly clever tale, laced with surprises as devious as its cast of shadowy scholars, The Clois...
Readers Top Reviews
Ralph Blumenauma
WARNING: I could not avoid one spoiler. The Cloisters is governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and specializes in medieval art. Its architecture and gardens, though created in the 1930s, are Gothic in style. The atmosphere of this building pervades much of the story. In this book, Patrick Roland is the curator of The Cloister, and he invites Ann Stilwell, the narrator, to be an associate curator. He already has another associate curator, Rachel Mondray. The two of them are to work together on preparing a forthcoming exhibition on divination, a part of which would be The Cloister’s collection of tarot cards. These cards, like other practices like, for example auguries or astrology, were said to tell you what the fates had in store for you, with all the implications for the question of Determinism versus Free Will. This introduces the novel’s main theme: the effect that the tarot cards were to have on those involved in studying them. Throughout the book, the relationship between Ann and Rachel is a curious one. Rachel is much wealthier, more poised, better dressed and more attractive than the insecure Ann. They seem to be not only colleagues, but good friends – Ann later actually moves into Rachel’s home. At the same time, Rachel was keeping things from Ann, was manipulative and using the friendship for her own ends, though what these ends, like so much else in the book, are not made clear. Ann has been warned about Rachel’s character by a friend, Laure, who had been at Yale with Rachel, and she told Ann that Rachel had always been selfish, manipulative, ruthless, and even fatally dangerous. Ann was initially skeptical about the tarot cards revealing any kind of fate; but she gradually came to change her mind and started asking them questions and trying to read the answers they gave. They emitted a kind of electricity. Rachel had consulted the cards once (we are not told with what result), but she did not want to know anything more about her future. We are told a good deal about the history of tarot cards and about the arcane symbolism on them, and there is an elaborate table of the latter. Even so, I don’t imagine that many readers understand them: I certainly did not. In addition to Patrick, Ann and Rachel, there is one other important character: Leo Bitburg, the gardener of the Cloisters. Many of the plants he grew were poisonous, though some of them were considered in the Middle Ages to have magical and medicinal properties if taken in small quantities. He had made charms of these – amulets, necklaces, mixtures and potions – which he sold. He was also a thief, having stolen small objects from the museum and selling them through a fence. Coarse though he was, both Ann and Rachel found him attractive and had slept with him. (Ann felt that the tarot cards had told her that she had no ...
Jodi FloodEdna Pa
I liked The Cloisters a lot. It was a fun ride and I look forward to reading books by Katy Hays in the future. She did a great job setting the scenes - making me feel like I was at the Cloisters or sitting on Long Lake. Now I want to visit those places. The characters were a little “flat” to me, though. Even though the story rolled out at a leisurely pace—slowly building intrigue—there wasn’t enough character development for me to truly understand the motives of— or anticipate the reactions of— any of the characters. And that made it difficult for me to root for any of them. I loved looking deeper into the references about art history, the role of tarot cards in French & Italian history, and quotes from the ancient big thinkers.
Diana Faillace Vo
I enjoyed this book; it presents an interesting look at the academic sphere where Ivy League scholarship is competitive, the resulting job opportunities scarce, and the population of that world so small it converges, becoming a closed set. The subject of tarot origins interested me, prompting me to turn the pages, but the willingness of the zoomer competitors--those jockeying for position within their PhD fields-- and their lack of accountability, their aggressive machinations underscored the change in acceptable behavior nowadays--when a lack of integrity is excused in order to 'get ahead.' Unfortunately, this novel is populated with people I didn't like. I didn't cheer for the protagonist--sad girl that she is. I waited for her to crash and burn even though she didn't. Despite the novel serving as her fight against entitlement, other class handicaps, and her guilt, she fails to make a case for herself, at least in my courtroom. The fable's moral: Well-crafted lies help one navigate the modern world.
Jeannette Hartman
I had high hopes for this book: the setting in the Museum of Modern Art's Cloisters and the focus on tarot cards and medieval art. But what ruined the book for me was the despicable nature of the characters. Ambitious graduate student Ann Stilwell has an impoverished background and lackluster college education to overcome. Heiress Rachel Mondray is a sociopath who uses or loses everyone she comes across. Cloisters curator Patrick Roland is privileged but intellectually shallow. Cloisters gardener Leo is the only one among them who has the self-awareness to know right from wrong. Ann and Rachel do terrible things that they chalk up to fate. No one takes responsibility here. That really took the shine off this story for me. It is well-written. It has an unusual setting and focus. It's entertaining.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One CHAPTER ONE
I would arrive in New York at the beginning of June. At a time when the heat was building-gathering in the asphalt, reflecting off the glass-until it reached a peak that wouldn't release long into September. I was going east, unlike so many of the students from my class at Whitman College who were headed west, toward Seattle and San Francisco, sometimes Hong Kong.
The truth was, I wasn't going east to the place I had originally hoped, which was Cambridge or New Haven, or even Williamstown. But when the emails came from department chairs saying they were very sorry… a competitive applicant pool… best of luck in your future endeavors, I was grateful that one application had yielded a positive result: the Summer Associates Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A favor, I knew, to my emeritus advisor, Richard Lingraf, who had once been something of an Ivy League luminary before the East Coast weather-or was it a questionable happening at his alma mater?-had chased him west.
They called it an "associates" program, but it was an internship with a meager stipend. It didn't matter to me; I would have worked two jobs and paid them to be there. It was, after all, the Met. The kind of prestigious imprimatur someone like me-a hick from an unknown school-needed.
Well, Whitman wasn't entirely unknown. But because I had grown up in Walla Walla, the dusty, single-story town in southeastern Washington where Whitman was located, I rarely encountered anyone from out of the state who knew of its existence. My whole childhood had been the college, an experience that had slowly dulled much of its magic. Where other students arrived on campus excited to start their adult lives anew, I was afforded no such clean slate. This was because both of my parents worked for Whitman. My mother, in dining services, where she planned menus and theme nights for the first-year students who lived in the residence halls: Basque, Ethiopian, asado. If I had lived on campus, she might have planned my meals too, but the financial waiver Whitman granted employees only extended to tuition, and so, I lived at home.
My father, however, had been a linguist-although not one on faculty. An autodidact who borrowed books from Whitman's Penrose Library, he taught me the difference between the six Latin cases and how to parse rural Italian dialects, all in between his facilities shifts at the college. That is, before he was buried next to my grandparents the summer before my senior year, behind the Lutheran church at the edge of town, the victim of a hit-and-run. He never told me where his love of languages had come from, just that he was grateful I shared it.
"Your dad would be so proud, Ann," Paula said.
It was the end of my shift at the restaurant where I worked, and where Paula, the hostess, had hired me almost a decade earlier, at the age of fifteen. The space was deep and narrow, with a tarnished tin ceiling, and we had left the front door open, hoping the fresh air would thin out the remaining dinner smells. Every now and then a car would crawl down the wide street outside, its headlights cutting the darkness.
"Thanks, Paula." I counted out my tips on the counter, trying my best to ignore the arcing red welts that were blooming on my forearm. The dinner rush-busier than usual due to Whitman's graduation-had forced me to stack plates, hot from the salamander, directly onto my arm. The walk from the kitchen to the dining room was just long enough that the ceramic burned with every trip.
"You know, you can always come back," said John, the bartender, who released the tap handle and passed me a shifter. We were only allowed one beer per shift, but the rule was rarely followed.
I pressed out my last dollar bill and folded the money into my back pocket. "I know."
But I didn't want to come back. My father, so inexplicably and suddenly gone, haunted every block of sidewalk that framed downtown, even the browning patch of grass in front of the restaurant. The escapes I had relied on-books and research-no longer took me far enough away.
"Even if it's fall and we don't need the staff," John continued, "we'll still hire you."
I tried to tamp down the panic I felt at the prospect of being back in Walla Walla come fall, when I heard Paula say behind me, "We're closed."
I looked over my shoulder to the front door, where a gaggle of girls had gathered, some reading the menu in the vestibule, others having pushed through the screen door, causing the CLOSED sign to slap against the wood.
"But you're still serving," said one, pointing at my beer.
"Sorry. Closed," said John.
"Oh, come on," said another. Their ...
I would arrive in New York at the beginning of June. At a time when the heat was building-gathering in the asphalt, reflecting off the glass-until it reached a peak that wouldn't release long into September. I was going east, unlike so many of the students from my class at Whitman College who were headed west, toward Seattle and San Francisco, sometimes Hong Kong.
The truth was, I wasn't going east to the place I had originally hoped, which was Cambridge or New Haven, or even Williamstown. But when the emails came from department chairs saying they were very sorry… a competitive applicant pool… best of luck in your future endeavors, I was grateful that one application had yielded a positive result: the Summer Associates Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A favor, I knew, to my emeritus advisor, Richard Lingraf, who had once been something of an Ivy League luminary before the East Coast weather-or was it a questionable happening at his alma mater?-had chased him west.
They called it an "associates" program, but it was an internship with a meager stipend. It didn't matter to me; I would have worked two jobs and paid them to be there. It was, after all, the Met. The kind of prestigious imprimatur someone like me-a hick from an unknown school-needed.
Well, Whitman wasn't entirely unknown. But because I had grown up in Walla Walla, the dusty, single-story town in southeastern Washington where Whitman was located, I rarely encountered anyone from out of the state who knew of its existence. My whole childhood had been the college, an experience that had slowly dulled much of its magic. Where other students arrived on campus excited to start their adult lives anew, I was afforded no such clean slate. This was because both of my parents worked for Whitman. My mother, in dining services, where she planned menus and theme nights for the first-year students who lived in the residence halls: Basque, Ethiopian, asado. If I had lived on campus, she might have planned my meals too, but the financial waiver Whitman granted employees only extended to tuition, and so, I lived at home.
My father, however, had been a linguist-although not one on faculty. An autodidact who borrowed books from Whitman's Penrose Library, he taught me the difference between the six Latin cases and how to parse rural Italian dialects, all in between his facilities shifts at the college. That is, before he was buried next to my grandparents the summer before my senior year, behind the Lutheran church at the edge of town, the victim of a hit-and-run. He never told me where his love of languages had come from, just that he was grateful I shared it.
"Your dad would be so proud, Ann," Paula said.
It was the end of my shift at the restaurant where I worked, and where Paula, the hostess, had hired me almost a decade earlier, at the age of fifteen. The space was deep and narrow, with a tarnished tin ceiling, and we had left the front door open, hoping the fresh air would thin out the remaining dinner smells. Every now and then a car would crawl down the wide street outside, its headlights cutting the darkness.
"Thanks, Paula." I counted out my tips on the counter, trying my best to ignore the arcing red welts that were blooming on my forearm. The dinner rush-busier than usual due to Whitman's graduation-had forced me to stack plates, hot from the salamander, directly onto my arm. The walk from the kitchen to the dining room was just long enough that the ceramic burned with every trip.
"You know, you can always come back," said John, the bartender, who released the tap handle and passed me a shifter. We were only allowed one beer per shift, but the rule was rarely followed.
I pressed out my last dollar bill and folded the money into my back pocket. "I know."
But I didn't want to come back. My father, so inexplicably and suddenly gone, haunted every block of sidewalk that framed downtown, even the browning patch of grass in front of the restaurant. The escapes I had relied on-books and research-no longer took me far enough away.
"Even if it's fall and we don't need the staff," John continued, "we'll still hire you."
I tried to tamp down the panic I felt at the prospect of being back in Walla Walla come fall, when I heard Paula say behind me, "We're closed."
I looked over my shoulder to the front door, where a gaggle of girls had gathered, some reading the menu in the vestibule, others having pushed through the screen door, causing the CLOSED sign to slap against the wood.
"But you're still serving," said one, pointing at my beer.
"Sorry. Closed," said John.
"Oh, come on," said another. Their ...
