A modern thriller with a Renaissance twist? I’ll take it
The story: The Cloisters is one of those books that sneaks up on you. It’s hardly what I expected when I purchased a copy in a moment of pre-flight panic that I would finish all of my books before we even landed (I had four and the flight was five hours, but Hudson News is the nothing if not an irrational, overpriced purchase mecca).
I was already holding a hardcover (which I read but won’t be reviewing here - there are enough haters on the internet), but the blue and gold paperback in the corner caught my eye. I noticed it had a Read with Jenna sticker on it, and was further intrigued. I don’t know much about Jenna Bush Hager, but I do know that the last book I read that had the RWJ seal of approval was Nothing to See Here, by Kevin Wilson, a surprisingly quirky (as far as mainstream celeb book club picks go) and charming novel. Buoyed solely by that knowledge, I picked up the book to read the jacket, and, as a lifelong acolyte of Medieval history, (I’m cool, I promise) was sold from the first few words.
Ann Stillwell, physically plain, mentally a polyglot with a predilection for art history and the Middle Ages, is more than ready to leave Walla Walla, Washington, the town she grew up in and attended college (Whitman) in post-graduation, especially in the wake of her beloved father’s death. Eager for a fresh start and (relatively) undaunted by her lack of acceptance to any graduate program, she heads to the Met for a summer fellowship, where her well-connected advisor has put in a word. Upon arrival, there’s some sort of SNAFU - the person she was meant to train under has gone to Italy for a residency, and she no longer has a place. Until approximately four minutes into this conversation, when a charismatic, attractive forty-something man named Patrick walks into the office where she’s getting rejected and insists she come work for him at The Cloisters, the Met’s Washington Heights sister museum that houses Medieval art and architecture, where he’s studying divination and tarot.
Ann is taken by The Cloisters (a very real place, btw, for those who haven’t had the pleasure of visiting), which, in the book, has been constructed with 12th century stones (I was unable to verify whether this is the case IRL) to look like a Medieval monastery, down to the well-tended herb gardens replete with Medievally ubiquitous herbs now widely acknowledged as poisonous.
It’s not just Ann and Patrick in The Cloisters. She also works with Rachel, a beautiful and brilliant art history student who also specializes in tarot, and is around to help Patrick between graduating from Harvard and pursuing her doctorate at Yale - and the feeling is mutual. Rachel, mysteriously scant in the friendship department, is determined to make Ann her best friend. The only person who stands in her way in Leo, the rough-and-tumble gardener responsible for maintaining the grounds, who seems to know something about Rachel and Patrick that Ann doesn’t, and consistently tries to warn her about not getting too close.
As is evident from the opening lines of the book: “death always visited me in August. A slow and delicious month, turned into something brutal. The change, quick as a card trick,” things go from terribly enchanting to terribly wrong in the matter of one evening. From there, things unravel quickly, as Ann continues to discover some uncomfortable truths about other mysterious things that have happened in connection with the people in her orbit - and has to discern whether or not she feels safe from the same fate.
The verdict: it’s a page-turner with a few satisfying twists and (in my opinion) an overly rushed ending. I’m constantly complaining that books are “100 pages too long,” but this one could’ve benefited from an additional 50 to revisit earlier plot points and tie things up with a bow.