Available Formats
Metropolitan Stories: A Novel
By (Author) Christine Coulson
Other Press LLC
Other Press LLC
9th June 2021
4th May 2021
United States
General
Fiction
Fiction and Related items
Urban communities
Fiction: general and literary
Short stories
813.6
Paperback
256
Width 127mm, Height 190mm
"Only someone who deeply loves and understands the Metropolitan Museum could deliver such madcap, funny, magical, tender, intimate fables and stories." -Maira Kalman, artist and bestselling author of The Principles of Uncertainty From a writer who worked at the Metropolitan Museum for more than twenty-five years, an enchanting novel that shows us the Met that the public doesn't see. "Only someone who deeply loves and understands the Metropolitan Museum could deliver such madcap, funny, magical, tender, intimate fables and stories." -Maira Kalman, artist and bestselling author of The Principles of Uncertainty From a writer who worked at the Metropolitan Museum for more than twenty-five years, an enchanting novel that shows us the Met that the public doesn't see. Hidden behind the Picassos and Vermeers, the Temple of Dendur and the American Wing, exists another world- the hallways and offices, conservation studios, storerooms, and cafeteria that are home to the museum's devoted and peculiar staff of 2,200 people-along with a few ghosts. A surreal love letter to this private side of the Met, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, but also a beautiful book about introspection, an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.
A love letter to the monumental institution[Metropolitan Stories] reads like a work by John Cheever[Coulson] captured the spirit of the place and brought it magically to life. Wall Street Journal
Coulson worked at the Met for 25 yearsNow, she is writing in her own voiceand sometimes, in the voice of the artworks themselves. Her debut novel, Metropolitan Stories, goes behind the scenes at the museum. Its a series of loosely connected stories about the people and objects that fill the galleries. NPR, All Things Considered
This series of vignettes goes beyond what a casual visitor to the museum might see and offers a witty, enjoyable look at the elegant and sometimes unhinged world that exists within its walls. Town and Country, The Must-Read Books of Fall 2019
A vivid, comedic, tender, and episodic debutCoulson is emotionally keen, acerbically witty, fleetly imaginative, and lyrically resonant, her love for the Met, for humanness, and for beauty radiant on each surprising page. Booklist (starred review)
[A] sly, whimsical debutThose who think they know [the Met] will be beguiled by the look behind the scenes; those unfamiliar with it will be prompted to make its acquaintance. Publishers Weekly
Delightful and sharply observedCoulsons erudition is worn lightly, and any worry that the Mets self-importance has rubbed off on her is quickly banished by the authors sly wit. New Criterion
In this series of loosely linked surreal vignettes, Coulson takes us on a tour of the hidden world that tourists never seean alternative guidebook to [the Mets] rich treasures. Kirkus Reviews
Written with elegance, wit, and a flair for comic genius, Metropolitan Stories describes the museum world as it is and as it strives to be. Coulson is a brilliant narrator of the fantastical and the all-too-plausible excesses of curators and museum directors. Her infectious sense of fun, her steady flow of insights into the human heart and its foibles, her wanton but beady-eyed attention to blind ambition, her passion for art itself, and most of all her deep sense of human character make this not only a delightful book, but also a deeply rewarding one. It marks the emergence of a major new talent.Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree
Only someone who deeply loves and understands the Metropolitan Museum could deliver such madcap, funny, magical, tender, intimate fables and stories. We are swept away in the museum. Beauty abounds. Yearning too. The art literally comes to life. And it makes perfect sense. Maira Kalman, author ofThe Principles of Uncertainty
WithMetropolitan Stories, Christine Coulson gives us a book as kaleidoscopic and enchanting as the museum it brings so imaginatively to life. Witty, enthralling, and utterly original, this novel is a treasure. Caroline Weber, Pulitzer Prize finalist forProusts Duchess and author ofQueen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
This bookwhich is about art but really about life, and the afterlife of artis a wonder. Coulson reverses the currency between spectator and spectacle, and in the process explodes the idea of how art lives. She accordions time, history, art theory, and the sub-sub culture of a massive public institution into 245 pages of mischievous, heart-tugging, and surreal fancy. My visits to the Met will never be the same. Leanne Shapton, National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning author of Swimming Studies
Every painting, every tapestry, every fragile, gilded chair in the Met not only has a story, but gets to tell it, in Christine Coulsons magical book. The history, humor, wonder, andperhaps above allbeauty that Coulson absorbed in her twenty-five years at the museum burst forth from these pages, in her wry and imaginative tales of the people and objects that make the Met all that it is. Ariel Levy, staff writer for The New Yorker and New York Times bestselling author of The Rules Do Not Apply
Stories define museums, and none more so than the Met. But it takes imagination as much as knowledge to recognize and appreciate them, as Christine Coulsons enchanting novel reveals. Melding fact and fiction, art history and autobiography, her strange tales of mutually dependent artworks and caretakers beat with a pulse that oscillates between the real and the unreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary. More than any scholar or connoisseur, Coulsons exquisite book captures the essence of the Metits ability to delight, surprise, astonish, and, ultimately, to dream. Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge, the Metropolitan Museums Costume Institute
Christine Coulson began her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1991 as a summer intern in the European Paintings Department. She returned in 1994 and, over the next 25 years, rose through the ranks of the Museum, working in the Development Office, the Director's Office, and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. In 2019 she left the Met to write full-time.