Impossible Views of the World by Lucy Ives

Impossible Views of the World

by Lucy Ives

Published August 1, 2017

Stella Krakus works at CeMART (Central Museum of Art NYC). When a colleague doesn't show up for work, Stella starts digging around and finds a reference and a map to a mysterious place: Elysia.  

Is there a mystery here?  Does Stella find Elysia? Is there even such a place as Elysia? You will have to read the book to find out.

The Reality of the read: For me, Impossible Views of the World took a little too long to straighten out in my brain the writing style of Ms. Ives. After about page 80, I realized that I found the book oddly delightful in different ways. Maybe, because as a fellow deep thinker, all over the place, go into my brain and see things happening in story form, like Stella's view of her own maddening stagnation when it came to one of her relationships (I mean, she uses a Star Wars reference for Pete's sake!!) I just got the formation of her thoughts. Ms. Ives creates an impossible view of the inner workings of an inner NYC museum, that none of us might ever get a glimpse of seeing. 

Ms. Ives has a nice literary way of writing. Such as this sentence from the book when describing the feeling of love: "My heart was a piece of paper. It was a paper fan. It was a dove." There were many of these beautiful types of sentences. I think that is what I found delightful about the book. I felt as though I could see what Stella was saying as if I was standing next to her and had x-ray vision into her soul.

If you don't like expanding your vocabulary while reading, this book might not be for you. Ms. Ives uses obscure and flowery words- like Zaftig (which means pleasantly plump, full figured, fleshy beautiful woman.) Although, if someone used that word now, I think they might get punched! 😮 I enjoyed the odd descriptive words. Kind of like a dictionary carnival.You will find yourself a lot smarter when this book is finished. I know I sure did.

While I read books I am asked to review I take notes. This book had a lot of great pages filled with things I wanted to learn more about after I finished reading. There are a ton of art references in this book. If only for the fun of exploring a museum might you read Impossible Views of the World. If for pure reading, it might just be too Impossible to finish.

On a side note: I did get a nice reminder of something that I had forgotten I had come to love as an art student in 7th grade: the Limner Portraiture. Limner art is a form of portrait painting where the painter has very little formal training which was extremely popular in 18th century America. I just might have to dabble a little, just to see if I love it as much as I did back then. 

I did find Impossible Views of the World a tad bit forced at the end. Through 304 pages of the story, it's only until the last 30ish pages that we get even a hint of a resolution coming for the mystery that surrounds the map of Elysia. 

I gave this book a rating of 3.5 for the slow start and too fast ending.

*I received this ebook through Penguin's First To Read ARC for my honest review.