Impossible Views of the World

By: Lucy Ives

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a coworker's disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever

Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan's renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with "a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist" is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt's current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world's water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that's making the rounds, and her mother - the imperious, impossibly glamorous Caro - wants to have lunch. It's almost more than she can overanalyze.

But the appearance of a mysterious map depicting a 19th-century utopian settlement sends Stella - a dogged expert in American graphics and fluidomanie (don't ask) - on an all-consuming research mission. As she teases out the links between a haunting poem, several unusual novels, a counterfeiting scheme, and one of the museum's colorful early benefactors, she discovers the unbearable secret that Paul's been keeping and charts a course out of the chaos of her own life.

Pulsing with neurotic humor and dagger-sharp prose, Impossible Views of the World is a dazzling debut novel about how to make it through your early 30s with your brain and heart intact.

©2017 Lucy Ives (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“[An] intricate, darkly funny debut.... There is so much going on in this novel, so many sharp observations packed into sentences as sensual and jarring as a Mardi Gras parade, that it bears a second look…Ives, an accomplished poet, infuses even mundane actions with startling imagery.... Read this book on whichever level you choose: you woman coming unglued, art world mystery or museum-based episode of The Office, replete with petty workplace drama, aged PCs and the occasional colleague marching ‘up and down the hall, loudly, in quest of a staple remover’. It’s a smart novel brimming with ideas about love, art, personal agency, a lack thereof.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“An archival treasure hunt yields riches for the heart-worn young curator in Lucy Ives’s ultra-charming fiction debut, Impossible Views of the World, though it’s the author’s tart observations of present-day social pretensions that sparkle brightest.” (Vogue)

“An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool.... Scintillating.... A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

When she let her ex

put his hands on her without breaking his nose and causing a scene, having him arrested for assault, I knew the book was doomed to mediocrity.