Behind Closed Doors: A Tale of the Crust
31st January 2023
Katy Hays’s involving, well-tuned debut novel takes its name from a real museum in New York, the Cloisters. Built by a Rockefeller, it resembles a medieval monastery and brims with glorious treasures. Ann, our provincial heroine (from Walla Walla, where she worked a menial job in order to fund college), would have preferred the Met, but when she’s serendipitously hired for a summer role, she finds herself swiftly pulled into the institution’s inner workings and the nefarious machinations of its well-heeled staff.
The cutthroat nature of the museum is placed under the spotlight. Although Ann is brilliant at history of art, with her lack of connections she finds it all but impossible to garner a foothold in the coveted PhD programs of the Ivy League, and views the Cloisters as a step up into a successful career. She can’t afford to get it wrong, renting a tiny apartment and avoiding phone calls from her mother to keep from being drawn back into hicksville. The irony, of course, is that in leaving a cloistered past, she’s entering somewhere even narrower.