Play Audiobook Sample
The Archivist: A Novel Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(0.00) - 0 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
A November Book Pick from The New York Times
When archivist Nadia Fontaine is found dead of an apparent drowning, Emily Snow is hired by Regents University to finish the job she started—to organize and process the papers of Raymond West, a famous Pulitzer Prize–winning author who has been short-listed for the Nobel.
Emily’s job comes with its inherent pressures. West’s wife, Elizabeth, is an heiress who’s about to donate $25 million to the Memorial Library—an eight-story architectural marvel that is the crown jewel of the university. The inaugural event in just a few months will be a gala for the who’s who of San Diego to celebrate the unveiling of the Raymond West Collection and the financial gift that made it all possible.
As Emily sets to work on the West papers, it begins to dawn on her that several items have gone missing from the collection. To trace their whereabouts, she gains unsupervised access to the highly restricted “dark archives,” in which she opens a Pandora’s box of erotically and intellectually charged correspondence between Raymond West and the late Nadia Fontaine. Through their archived emails, Emily goes back a year in time and relives the tragic trajectory of their passionate love affair. Did Nadia really drown accidentally, as the police report concluded, or could it have been suicide, or, even worse, murder? Compelled to complete the collection and find the truth, Emily unwittingly morphs into an adult Nancy Drew and a one-woman archivist crusader on a mission to right the historical record.
Twisting slowly like a tourniquet, The Archivist turns into a suspenseful murder mystery with multiple and intersecting layers. Not just a whodunit, it is also a profound meditation on love, privacy, and the ethics of destroying or preserving materials of a highly personal nature.
Download and start listening now!
“Never underestimate an archivist. Rex Pickett’s The Archivist is a haunting and sometimes heartbreaking exploration of the truths and power records hold, the insidiousness of their erasure and destruction, and the redemption that can be found in their restoration and preservation. It captures the archival thrill of the hunt, the pursuit of all the pieces that will tell a story, no matter what the consequences. In this shattering thriller, Pickett’s Emily Snow shows that archivists are detectives, and relentless ones, at that. The Archivist surfaces the hidden and often ignored labor of the archival profession. Pickett captures the joys, hazards, and annoyances of being an archivist and renders a closely observed depiction of the politics and pecking orders of libraries, special collections, and archives. Archivists are at turns eavesdroppers and voyeurs, sometimes bonded to their subjects. Although often conflicted by competing obligations, they are driven by a singular mission to ensure that truths are preserved.”
— Caryn Radick, digital archivist, Rutgers University
Quotes
-
“Take a deep dive in the dark archives with intrepid, independent, indefatigable project archivist Emily Snow as she excavates deadly secrets in Pickett’s exhilarating debut literary thriller. With deftly woven narrative threads and intrigue worthy of Hitchcock, The Archivist is immersive and rewarding. Pickett does for university archives what Raymond Chandler did for LA.”
— Janet Somerville, author of Yours for Probably Always -
“Road trip! Famously translated to the screen by Alexander Payne, Sideways deserves to be read and relished. Dour Miles and priapic Jack are the Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty of this contemporary picaresque which is by turns hilarious, poignant, and intoxicating.”
— Jay McInerney, LitHub, on Sideways -
“Suspenseful and haunting, The Archivist carried me away. Rex Pickett’s noir novel of obsessive passion, deadly secrets, and the power of creativity unrolls with relentless, tidal force. Join heroine Emily Snow and take a journey into the dark archives. Enthralling.”
— Meg Gardiner, author of the UNSUB series -
“Sideways writer Rex Pickett always leaves us wanting more and with The Archivist he delivers. Immersive, wonderful, absorbing, he draws the reader into a geologically nuanced tragic romance that ramifies into something inexpressibly transcendent.”
— James Phelan, author of Patriot Act -
“Rex Pickett’s beautifully written and tautly structured novel is a slow burn that builds on every page to its searing, emotional conclusion—along the way the author and his characters descend into the dark chasm that often separates art from truth, and sometimes does not.”
— Charlie Lovett, New York Times bestselling author of The Bookman’s Tale and Escaping Dreamland -
“An archives encapsulates an overlapping set of stories. Each of these tells one thread of a narrative, and the researcher pieces these together to create a cohesive approximation of the past. Rex Pickett, in his novel The Archivist, creates a fictional archives, one populated by archivists who act and speak as real archivists do, and his multifoliate story replicates the process of archival research. The reader accumulates the novel’s multiple streams of action, wondering where the novel will turn next, always working toward a final resolution that reveals itself with surprising force.”
— Geof Huth, chief records officer, NY State Unified Court System -
“As deeply, disturbingly immersive as the archive at its heart.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“The Archivist is a powerfully engrossing mystery/thriller by author Rex Pickett. A departure from the Sideways trilogy, Pickett gracefully draws the reader into a web of love, obsession, paranoia, betrayal, and the written word. The plot draws the reader in subtly, and shortly thereafter, they are as consumed as Emily in discovering a dark reality.”
— San Francisco Book Review -
“The Archivist is one of those novels that is so original and unique that it is hard to put down. Any historian, librarian, or book lover will be pulled in from the first page. Rex Pickett has written a gorgeous tale…This all-consuming novel was a fascinating delve into the dark side of academia.”
— Mystery and Suspense -
“Pickett’s colorful prose and dramatic turns of phrase will keep you engaged as you become drawn into the mystery of Nadia’s death.”
— Washington Independent Review of Books
Awards
-
A New York Times Pick of Best New Books of the Month
-
A Crime Reads Pick of Best New Books Coming Out This Week
-
A Barnes & Noble Pick of Favorite Indie E-Books of 2021
-
Finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Mystery
The Archivist Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Rex Pickett
Rex Pickett is the critically acclaimed author of the novel Sideways, which was adapted into the iconic film of the same title. Sideways was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay, among 350 other plaudits. Pickett is the author of three Sideways sequels—the IPPY Gold Medal–winning Sideways Oregon (previously published as Vertical), Sideways Chile, and now Sideways New Zealand. He is also the author of The Archivist. Pickett is currently working on a post–Sideways New Zealand trilogy. A Southern California native, the Rex Pickett Papers are currently enshrined at Geisel Library on the campus of his alma mater, the University of California San Diego.
About Caroline Hewitt
Caroline Hewitt loves reading and imagining. Since she couldn’t figure out a way to actually jump inside a novel, acting and adapting are the closest, and most satisfying, ways she has found to inhabit stories—like narrating audiobooks and adapting novels into plays.