THE ARCHIVIST

Archival work is a lot more perilous ethically and even existentially than you ever imagined according to this triple-decker from the author of Sideways (2004).

Emily Snow has come from Austin’s real-life Harry Ransom Center to San Diego’s fictional Regents University to serve as the project archivist for the collected papers of Pulitzer Prize­–winning novelist Raymond West. It’s an exciting assignment not only because of the size of the archive, which runs to 77 linear feet, but because West, unlike most literary lions who get this treatment, is still very much alive, teaching at Regents, and whispered to be a favorite for the next Nobel Prize in literature. Even before she’s learned to allow extra time to negotiate San Diego traffic in her morning commute, Emily senses crosscurrents in the archive. Helena Blackwell, the veteran director of Special Collections, can barely bring herself to mention the name of Emily’s predecessor, Nadia Fontaine, who drowned off Black’s Beach shortly after she was removed from the project. Digital archivist Joel Beery, who shares Emily’s love of surfing, tells her enough about Nadia, who swam half a mile every day, to make it seem highly unlikely that her death was accidental. Most important, the materials Emily finds in the dark archive—a digital hodgepodge of uncataloged material Joel helps Emily get unauthorized access to—reveal that Nadia had violated a fundamental professional taboo by carrying on a torrid affair with West and provide an extensive draft of The Archivist, a secret tell-all account of their relationship that West’s wife, wealthy donor Elizabeth West, would do anything to keep from the light of day. Now Emily faces her own fraught ethical dilemmas and serious threats from violent criminals.

Immensely long but as deeply, disturbingly immersive as the archive at its heart.