I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The Cartographers

This book came on a recommended list and WOW did it sound great.

In fact, after the first few chapters, I was telling my wife about the great premise.  But I was already warning her about the irritating characters.  And, as the story went on, the premise got even better, but the characters got even more and more annoying.

And the repetitions in the book were endless.  She kept repeating herself.  She was saying the same thing over and over again.  Perhaps in a slightly different way.  But then she would circle back and confirm the repetitions.  So by the end of a chapter you had read the same thing two or three times.  And then she might repeat it once more.

The book grew so annoying that I almost didn’t bother finishing it (as many people on Goodreads said).  But I hate not finishing things, so I did something that I never do.  I sped up my audio book.

I’m not sure if I found the characters especially dull because of their actions or because of Emily Woo Zeller the audiobook narrator.  But holy cow, this book dragged on.  By the end of the book I had moved the audio speed up to 1.8x and for Emily Woo Zeller, it did not make it hard to follow (some of the other narrators were too sped up at that speed).  

The other narrators were Ron Butler, Nancy Wu, Jason Culp, Brittany Pressley, Karen Chilton and Neil Hellegers.  It was a little hard to tell when a new narrator came in, because they mostly seemed to be telling the story from different points of view.  But sometimes the main narrator narrated their parts as well. 

So the premise of the story (and I hope this isn’t a spoiler) is that if a map is made with an error (intentional or not), whatever is on that map actually exists–but only if you have that map.  I mean, this is an amazing premise.  And it is based on a real event.

Here’s a story from NPR about a map with a fictional town that suddenly became real (the reason it was on the map in the first place is super interesting too).

It’s an amazing premise, that was utterly dulled out with some of the dullest people I’ve ever read.  I actually wondered if the author had ever met other people, been in the business world, or ever been in love with anyone.

Goodreads critics (I had to see if I was the only one who hated these characters) are pretty brutal to some of the facts of the story.  And I have to say that I was rather confused early on when it says that the main character took out DISH GLOVES to look at this old map.  I let it go in my head, but it did stick out as odd.  if she was a cartographer, she would certainly have proper gloves and would NEVER use bulky dish gloves that she had kept under the sink!  Good grief.

The other criticisms are valid as well–drinking wine near your precious item.  The fact that the main character is not a cartographer as she does not actually make maps.  But fine, I’ll leave those aside.

The book starts with information about how Nell was fired from the New York Public Library.  She was an intern in the maps division.  She found a box in storage and brought it upstairs thinking that she had found a rare treasure.  But when her father saw the 1930’s era gas station map of upstate New York, he yelled at her for dragging the junk upstairs and fired her.  Her boyfriend was also fired (because he stood up for her).

I mean, could this happen?  Sure, I suppose.  But we’ll accept it and move on.  Because of the way she was fired, she now had no credibility in the cartography field and could not find a job anywhere.  That seems far less likely, but whatever.  Until she found a job working for a company that makes reproductions of maps to sell.  Her boss is super nice.

So, Nell (I’m not sure when it’s ever mention that her name is Helen, and then somewhere along the halfway mark of the book, a policeman calls her Helen, and I was like, who is that?) hasn’t talked to her father since she was fired.

Then one day the library calls her and asks her to come in.  Now, the first thing she thinks is “what has my father done now?”  At no time does she think, “my father is dead.”  Even when the police bring her to the library.  It takes like fifteen minutes of audiobook time to discover that her father is dead.  Why is the pacing so slow?

And then, when she finds his secret stash of things, in that stash is the gas station map that he fired her over.  Never once does she think, “this map must be important.”  Instead, she keeps saying over and over and over again that she doesn’t understand why he kept this piece of junk.  She doesn’t understand why he would keep this junky map.  Good LORD, she is so dense.

Then she calls her ex-boyfriend to help her with the map.  He also has his PhD in map skills and he works for a tech company that is bigger than Google and which is looking to digitize the worlds maps.  He comes over after not seeing her for seven years.  And their long dormant relationship is kindled with the dimmest bulb that has ever passed for romantic interest.  It is staggering how dull and bland these two are.  And it takes them forever to realize that the other is still interested because of how little chemistry and sparks are actually present when you see them together.  There’s nothing to rekindle because we never learn about their tepid earlier relationship.  I mean, they were living together and when they were both fired, he cleaned out all of the stuff from her apartment and left a note.  That’s a relationship that I’m interested in learning more about for sure!

Did what he said mean that he still liked me?
But he said he was only doing this one favor for me.
Does the fact that he came to my house to do this one favor for me mean that he still likes me?

She invited me at dinner time, so I have brought dinner with me.  But when I arrive she is busy with the map, and clearly did not mean for me to bring dinner.  I guess I shouldn’t have come.

You two are the worst and your coupledom is only a good thing because it means that neither one of you will bore a different person in the future.

So here’s another puzzling thing, the two of them are aware of the “traps” in maps and so they finally decide that hey, maybe her dad saved this map because there’s an error in it.  This map happens to be of an area where her mother and father spent a summer (more on that).  She and the ex decide to comb the map looking for towns that aren’t in the index.  So, why not start with the area of the map where her parents stayed?  They want to be methodical, yes, so she starts with grid A1.  But for the love of god, wouldn’t you start with the squares at least near where your parents stayed oh AND WHERE YOUR MOTHER DIED?  (that’s not a spoiler).  Her mother died in a housefire.  Why would you spend an entire night combing through a map and not start where your mother died?

Holy cow.

So, the interesting part of the story is obviously about the fictional town and the map that lets you go there.  People are searching online for these maps and paying millions of dollars for them (and when she first hears this Nell says, “but it’s a junky old map” she never once says, “hmm, maybe there is something peculiar about it.”

The flashback to her parents are certainly fun.  Her mother and father met at a PhD program in mapping in Wisconsin. And her mother was very charismatic ,so she brought in a bunch of other people into their little group and they all worked on their projects together.  One of the people was actually her oldest friend who was obsessed with her but never did anything about it.

They all worked great together and were inseparable.  I found the timelines weird, though, because they all receive their PhD and go celebrate and then they all rent a house together to finish the project that they all said they would do for their PhD.  Um, what?  I assume maybe I misheard that, so I’ll allow it.

Someone on Goodreads joked that all of these people would want to move into a house with a married couple with a small child.  But I’ll let that go as well.

One thing that really irritated me in the flashbacks was how each person (while clearly talking to Nell) would say things like “and you even enjoyed that as well,” because Nell was a baby there.  It broke me out of the flashback every time and also seemed so superfluous because  the details were so dumb–“I carried you on my back while we went down the stairs.”

Okay, wrapping up here.  And why am I spending so much time writing about a book I disliked so much?  Probably because it could have been SO GOOD.

Anyhow, while they were all working on their big project, they discover something about the gas station map.  And they all become obsessed with it.

Here’s a spoiler complaint so I’ll cover it in white, but it’s the most mystifying parts of the book for me.

Wally is the guy who is obsessed with Nell’s mom.  He is the guy who wants all of the copies of the map.  His reasoning seems to be to prevent people from finding the fictional town of Agloe.  But he never gives a compelling enough reason for that.  And, if he didn’t draw attention to the map by trying to acquire (through often illegal means) every copy of it, no one would have known about it anyway.  And when he finally admits that he believed that Nell’s mother was still alive and he needed a copy of the map to get there, why didn’t he just tell one of his friends about his idea?  Even if they thought he was crazy, would it have hurt anyone for them to go back and find out?  Does he really have to kill so many people, including Nell’s father just to try to save her mother?  It’s bonkers.

When I first started this book I was so taken with the concept that I wanted to read her other books like The Book of M which is quite celebrated.  But this book made me so angry that I’m not going anywhere near that other one.

And I just saw that this book was listed for awards, too.  How.