Impossible Views of the World

 
Impossible Views of the World

by Lucy Ives

Penguin

2017

 

 

Impossible Views of the World is a literary novel that unfolds over the course of a single week, narrated in the first person by museum curator Stella, whom Lucy Ives imbues with a unique and engaging authorial voice. Stella is having a difficult week personally and a very busy one professionally.

 
On the personal front, Stella is dealing with two complicated relationships, and perhaps more importantly, her feelings about them. First, her soon-to-be-ex husband Whit, who won't sign his divorce papers, and also won't stop showing up at the museum, which both annoys and embarrasses her. Second, her coworker Frederick, who is doing better than her, and will likely soon outrank her. 

 
Fred and Stella grew infatuated, then slept together, and then have awkwardly wondered whether to try to be together. Fred likes having easy, committmentless relationships with a number of women. He likes this lifestyle too much to actually date Stella, but likes her too much to call it off, so he sort of torturously strings her along. Stella meanwhile feels guilty about cheating on Whit, unable to resist Fred, and until this week, unable to see him in the unflattering light of truth enough to get over her infatuation.

 
Meanwhile, don't feel too bad for Whit, because starting a couple years before Fred and Stella even began flirting, he started hooking back up with his ex-girlfriend from highschool, for daily sex and sexting. This week also, Stella will admit that Whit's affair hurt her, and that although she wasn't aware of it, his emotional unavailability probably created the conditions that led to her own workplace crush and fling.

 
At work, in the museum, Fred has just unveiled a new exhibit to much public acclaim. His curation was financed by a Dutch company at the forefront of privatizing the world's water supply. He also scores an additional professional coup - the corporation wants to build a dozen private, exclusive company towns around the world, and thanks to Fred, wants to build a new branch of the museum in each of them.

 
Also, Stella's coworker Paul has gone missing, and while using his office to finish some work, Stella finds an interesting map of a previously-unknown utopian community called Elysia. Trying to distract herself from her disastrous lovelife and the fact that she's being professionally eclipsed, Stella also spends the week investigating the mysterious provenance of the map. 

 
This is the true heart of the novel. Stella pours herself into her research. Ives gives us excerpts and summaries as Stella finds an obscure book of utopian feminist scifi that mentions Elysia, a historic scrapbook with the original of the map, a biography of the scrapbooker's descendant, a bohemian socialite who named her art salon Elysia, etc. Also some of missing Paul's poetry, and Paul's ex-wife's recent novel. Stella's investigation even unearths secrets about the rich family who founded the water company, although nothing she learns will stand in the way of capitalism. Ives really impressed me with the winding nature of the search, and the many voices she adopts to create all the fictional documents.

 
As I said earlier, Ives gives Stella herself a fascinating voice as the book's narrator. She is precise, maybe even overly so. Her sentences constantly interrupt themselves with clarifying clauses. She says what things are not, as well as what they are. And then sometimes she realizes she's overelaborated, says 'I mean,' and repeats herself more plainly. 

 
I like Stella as a narrator. She's maybe my favorite since Finley from Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles. I like that she over-intellectualizes, but also can't prevent her emotions from leaking through, as when she can't stop herself from getting judgey about her husband's secret girlfriend. I like that Fred's amoral careerism kind of disgusts her. And I like the thrilling curiosity that drives her search, her desire to simply know the truth about something, even if it can't lead to an exhibit, even if it's irrelevant to the corporate sponsors.