Try free for 30 days

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Impossible Views of the World cover art

Impossible Views of the World

By: Lucy Ives
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a coworker'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 30s with your brain and heart intact.

©2017 Lucy Ives (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

“[An] intricate, darkly funny debut.... There is so much going on in this novel, so many sharp observations packed into sentences as sensual and jarring as a Mardi Gras parade, that it bears a second look…Ives, an accomplished poet, infuses even mundane actions with startling imagery.... Read this book on whichever level you choose: you woman coming unglued, art world mystery or museum-based episode of The Office, replete with petty workplace drama, aged PCs and the occasional colleague marching ‘up and down the hall, loudly, in quest of a staple remover’. It’s a smart novel brimming with ideas about love, art, personal agency, a lack thereof.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“An archival treasure hunt yields riches for the heart-worn young curator in Lucy Ives’s ultra-charming fiction debut, Impossible Views of the World, though it’s the author’s tart observations of present-day social pretensions that sparkle brightest.” (Vogue)

“An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool.... Scintillating.... A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

What listeners say about Impossible Views of the World

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.