Sarah Henstra (Paola Scattolon)

“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse,” said the British-Mexican 20th-century surrealist painter and novelist Leonora Carrington. “I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” As a statement of purpose, this sounds fairly typical, which Carrington’s artistic output was categorically not. In the event, she entered into a romantic relationship with the much older artist Max Ernst, whose achievement eclipsed her own in her time; it is only recently that Carrington has been rediscovered and her reputation revised to allow her some measure of the acclaim that should always have been her due.

A reader would do well to bear in mind the trajectory of Carrington’s artistic reputation while making their way through Sarah Henstra’s new novel. The book follows a struggling art history PhD named Theresa Bateman, who toils thanklessly under the thumb of Russell Horber, a noted academic and authority on the painting of the late Lark Ringold, a venerated surrealist and member of a cult-like English commune called the Shown.

When Theresa receives an unsolicited missive alerting her to the fact that a fabled deck of tarot cards supposedly painted by Ringold, and long considered lost, still survives, the junior sessional lecturer plots a voyage to England to research the claim and to meet Ringold’s elderly twin sister, Nell. Theresa’s academic detective work brings forth secrets about Ringold’s reputation, the tortured history of the Shown and its members, and the truth about its charismatic leader, Corvo Ringold (who was also Lark and Nell’s uncle).

The Lost Tarot is Henstra’s follow-up to her 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award–winning debut, The Red Word. That novel, also set in the world of postsecondary academia, was a feminist examination of fissures around campus life and rape culture. Here, Henstra shifts her perspective to the corrosive ways male academics enhance their own reputations, often at the expense of their more talented female colleagues. Henstra’s depiction of the relationship between Theresa and Russell will be familiar to anyone who has been unfairly passed over for a promotion or sabotaged by an associate attempting to take credit for someone else’s work. Russell is, in this regard, a bit of a caricature, but he serves his purpose in moving the story forward.

Less effective are the sections of the novel set in the past, during young Lark and Nell’s time at the Shown. These passages, which are tinged with aspects of fairy tales and gothic romance, feel tonally at odds with the more realistic contemporary sections in the novel. And for a narrative that is all about the nature of surrealism as an artistic mode, Henstra seems curiously reluctant to lean into this approach on a formal level.

Eyes and sight emerge as a leitmotif throughout the book – in addition to the name of the cult and the medium of painting as the chosen artistic pursuit of the characters, there is a hallucinogenic tincture called “the Eyeopener,” and a book (inspired by John Berger’s classic study Ways of Seeing) called, simply, On Seeing. The focus on sight and perception (members of the Shown are called “perceptants”) is frequently ironic; numerous characters are not what they appear or else don disguises to hide their true identities. This works to a point, but Henstra pulls back too often to explain herself, denying the reader the opportunity to make subtle connections and instead saying the quiet part out loud: “All this talk of Seeing, when the Shown is really about concealment.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the strength of her earlier work, the best part of The Lost Tarot is the academic satire, a world Henstra is well versed in and clearly understands to its core. The balance of the novel is never less than intriguing, but leaves a reader wishing that the author had pushed herself further in the dreamlike direction of the avant-garde artists who inspired her.