As someone with a long-time interest in the tarot, a deck of 78 cards that can be used in a multitude of ways – to practice magic, to tell the future, to dive deep into your soul, or even as a creative tool – I always keep an eye out for fiction books that feature tarot. Here’s three recent titles featuring tarot to pique your interests in this fascinating object.
In The Fortune Seller by Rachel Kapelke-Dale, Rosie, a middle class young woman who has fought hard to secure her place in the wealthy, elite Yale equestrian team, must contend with a new member of the group after a summer spent abroad. Annelise is captivating and mysterious and uses tarot to tell fortunes for her friends. When money starts disappearing from one of the group’s bank account, the team starts turning on each other. While working at a hedge fund post-graduation, Rosie begins to realize the true identity of Annelise and that her place within the once close-knit group was no mere happenstance, leading Rosie to question what really happened the day of a deadly riding accident her senior year. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “an intoxicating mystery that defies easy categorization.”
Claire McMillan’s latest novel, Alchemy of a Blackbird, tells the story of Surrealist painter Remedios Varo, from her escape from Nazi-occupied Paris to her relationship and creative collaboration with fellow Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (who has seen a resurgence of interest since the original plates for her Major Arcana were debuted in 2018) in Mexico City. Blackbird centers Varo, who felt sidelined by her male counterparts in the Surrealist movement, and focuses on her relationship to her art, to Carrington, and to the creative, surreal power of tarot. McMillan’s inclusion of card images as well as pairing them with certain characters are a delightful addition for those interested in tarot archetypes.
Katy Hayes explores a slightly darker side of the tarot in her debut novel The Cloisters, where a summer research assistant gets caught up in a tangled web of secrets and power after uncovering a hidden 15th century tarot deck at the titular Cloisters, a gothic museum in New York City with a renowned collection of medieval art. Delighted with her discovery, Ann’s fellow researchers and experts in the history of divination induct her into their dangerous games of seduction, ambition, and power as they each become obsessed with the deck and its perceived ability to tell the future. A window into the world of cut-throat academia and museum curation, this is adult dark academia at its best.
~posted by V.
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