Perhaps the only immutable rule of writing is not wasting the reader’s time. Lucy Ives broke that rule in Impossible Views of the World as far as I’m concerned. I requested this book from NetGalley because the description had tantalizing elements of a mystery set in a museum, possible corporate conspiracy, and nineteenth century utopias. I’ll be frank: all of this fizzled, due mostly to a narrator that I found so scatterbrained and non-confrontational (with one spectacular exception) that I could barely tolerate her. I hung on because of those plot elements but, now that I’ve finished, I feel that my time has been wasted.
Stella Krakus is a self-described functionary for the Central Museum of Art in New York. CeMArt specializes in American decorative objects and Stella works on whatever projects her boss sends her way. She has a difficult mother, is in the middle of a divorce, and frets about her affair with a coworker and her lingering feelings for him. When Stella’s sort-of work friend, Paul, disappears and is later found dead of an apparent overdose, she starts to investigate what he was working on.
Paul’s work leads Stella on a research bender into a pseudonymous nineteenth century author and a long, kind-of interesting family history. Being a librarian, the parts of the book in which Stella scoured catalogs and diligently googled and compulsively read obscure books were catnip to me. If I were a different reader, I might not have been so annoyed when Stella would get derailed by her personal life. If Stella were a different narrator, there’s also a good chance I would have been less frustrated by this book.
Sometimes, I like unlikable characters. The degree to which I like them depends a lot on what makes the character unlikable. I’m fond of curmudgeons, the damaged, the vengeance-seekers, etc. But Stella’s passivity bothered me. She lets other characters—her boss, her mother, and her former lover—take advantage of her good nature. The only character she confronts is her soon-to-be-ex husband. Stella’s narrative style is also incredibly scatterbrained. While some of my best friends and dearest family members are scatterbrained, Stella bops around from subject to subject so much that it was hard to track where the book was going.
Impossible Views of the World is a strange book—so strange that I don’t know what it’s trying to be. I don’t recommend it and I wish I could get back the time I spent waiting for it to get better and for the mystery to start making sense.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 1 August 2017.
It’s too bad this was so disappointing. The premise definitely grabbed my attention, but the general consensus seems to be that it’s a disjointed book with an annoying protagonist. Don’t think I’ll be rushing to read this one after all. Oh well.