Impossible Views Of The World

by Lucy Ives

"A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker'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 thirties with your brain and heart intact"--

• ISBN10: 0735221537
• ISBN13: 9780735221536
• Publish Date: 1 August 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 30 June 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Prentice Hall Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Hillary]

Well...that was a letdown. I  had such high hopes for this book also. I loved the synopsis of it on NetGalley and couldn't wait to dive into it. The book was pretty good I kept waiting for THE BIG THING to happen and I clicked on my Kindle and.THE END.

I at first thought maybe my copy was missing a few pages, but a quick check on GoodReads and nope that was truly the end of the book. O.K

I now can't decide if  I liked it or if I am pissed cause it didn't end the way I felt it should. I mean I am not the author, so I dont have any say in how it ends, but I did feel that the secret that was revealed was..lackluster. I wanted SCANDALS and ACTION and all of that.  Instead, all I got was a divorce and an affair.

Looking back I realize that this is more of how the main protagonist grows. It is a character story more than it is a plot driven story. I dont have a problem with that, but I went into this with an expectation of something more so that makes me somewhat grumpy that I did not get it.

As a character study though it was excellent. We see how Stella grows and changes throughout the novel. The book goes deep into her psyche, so we are in her head the whole time. There were times I thought she was dumb but we have all been in her shoes including myself. She was perfectly flawed as we all are. I found that I could relate to her. I have never been through a divorce but I HAVE been on the losing side of unrequited love, and I found myself nodding my head and going I am glad it wasn't just me that was so blind even though it was only a fictional person that I was relating to. It is amazing how stories even fictional ones can make us feel less alone.

Again there was nothing I did not NOT like about the book I was just expecting more from it as the synopsis made it seem that more would happen and it did not. I think if I had lower expectations or knew that this was more of a character study then I may have finished it with different feelings.

 This review was originally posted on Adventures in Never Never Land

[Quirky Cat]

I received a digital copy of this book through the Penguin First to Read program (reviews aren’t required, but are preferred). I’ll be honest; it was the cover alone that sold me on this book. It’s just absolutely stunning! As for the book itself, maybe it was the mood I’ve been in lately, but I really struggled to get all the way through this one. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, I just felt unable to get into the plot or feel attached to the main character. Which is a bit of a shame, since the writing itself was really lovely (the author included poems and research papers and other little bits like that to vary up the dialogue).



The writing style for Impossible Views of the World was a breath of fresh air; it is just so very different from everything else I’ve been reading lately. It actually makes me feel bad saying I didn’t love the book, because while I didn’t love the plot, I really did love the writing itself, as well as the cover.
Stella Krakus is a curator at Manhattan’s Central Museum of Art; she’s moderately successful at her job, having published one paper, and started on art history blog (which she abandoned later). She’s become disinterested in her work lately, but does a decent job of keeping it hidden. Her mother is a rich and relatively famous print dealer, and her father a lawyer. Her husband? Soon to be ex and a jerk and a half. That pretty much sums up Stella’s life, before the start of events in the novel.
Stella is under a lot of stress in her life, between her forty-plus-hour a week job, the impending divorce (you know, whenever she can convince him to actually sign the papers), her office-affair still lingering in the air, and oh, her newly missing coworker, Paul. Despite all this, she manages to keep herself together (certainly more than I would have, credit to her). In truth I feel that her efforts to maintain control resulted in her numbing herself to the world, ever so slightly.
Paul’s disappearance has Stella discovering a beautifully rendered map, which fascinates her so much she ends up running off on a quasi-treasure hunt because of it. The map itself depicts a 19th century settlement, named Elysia, which in itself has no current location. There are references to Elysia throughout fiction and history, but nothing definitive. The puzzle of this brings a whole new life to Stella and her opinion of art and the museum – she uses every resource available to her to discover the mystery that Paul was working on.
I feel that through the journey to find Elysia, Stella actually managed to find herself along the way. It seems like her whole life was just her living up to everyone’s expectations (including her own), and she has finally found what she needed to free herself. Watching Stella through that transition was almost liberating, in a sense, and was the real highlight of the story to me.
The ending itself was unexpected, but also refreshingly honest and believable. It fit with the story, giving the narrative the sense of finality required, while not overdoing it.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks