The Cartographers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2, Chapters 5-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-15

Part 3, Chapters 16-18

Part 3, Chapters 19-22

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapters 5-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The Map”

Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary

Nell returns home but is concerned when she notices a black Audi tailing her. Puzzled by the unknown thief’s motivations for seeking out the Junk Box map, she seeks advice from a specialist in contemporary cartography: Felix, her ex-boyfriend, who was also fired for defending her during the Junk Box Incident and now works at Haberson Global. When Felix arrives, he becomes furious at the sight of the Junk Box map. After he calms down, Nell gives him a USB drive with the security footage from the NYPL robbery. They also discover a business card for Ramona “Romi” Wu, a shady maps dealer.

Felix searches online for information about the Junk Box map; the results range from hobbyists seeking the map to warnings about a mysterious group called the Cartographers. Nell decides to visit Romi, and she does not tell Felix about her plans to seek reinstatement at the NYPL. She does, however, invite him to attend Daniel’s funeral.

Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary

At work, Felix tests a new algorithm for the Haberson Map, which is Haberson’s ambitious, impossible project to create a perfect map. However, Felix and his team are currently at an impasse on the project. Unlike Nell’s discontent at Classic, Felix loves his current work at Haberson.

William, Felix’s boss, appears during the algorithm test to announce that Haberson will be taking over the NYPL’s security. Felix is reminded of the 1930 General Drafting New York road map that Nell has hidden away at her apartment. William orders that the team use the Haberson Map to retrace the steps of the NYPL burglar. While calibrating the Haberson Map, Felix studies the security footage from Nell’s USB drive to determine the burglar’s route. There is no sign that anyone entered or exited the library through the lobby, which is the only way to access the Map Division from outside. Even so, the lone, masked perpetrator appears in the Map Division and kills the security guard. The burglar then ransacks the Map Division and damages the security camera. Felix is perplexed: He can’t understand how the thief got in and out of the NYPL.

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary

Meanwhile, Nell uses the business card to find Romi’s shop. She is puzzled by the nature of Daniel’s connection to Romi, but Romi remains Nell’s only lead. The chapter also relates that the company that created the 1930 map, General Drafting Corporation, went out of business in the 1990s after weathering a lawsuit around 1930. No General Drafting employees or business records remain, and the other copies of the map in question have long been lost and forgotten.

Romi recognizes Nell and reveals her friendship with Daniel; however, she refuses to give Nell any other information until Nell mentions the Junk Box map. Romi believes that the map has been destroyed, and Nell doesn’t correct her. Eventually, Romi agrees to explain why Daniel sought her out before his death, in return, she insists that Nell must return her business card and leave immediately afterward. Romi also reveals that she was friends not only with Daniel, but also with Tam and with Nell herself.

Romi relates that she met Tam and the rest of their mutual friends (Daniel, Bear, Francis, Eve, and Wally) when they were all undergraduates. Tam and Wally were childhood friends but polar opposites, and Tam felt no romantic attraction to Wally. During freshman year, Tam and Wally met Francis and Daniel, their professor’s favorite students. Daniel, like Tam, had a more experimental mindset. The two quickly began dating, much to Wally’s unhappiness. (Romi and Francis also pursued a relationship together.) A few years later, the group also befriended Bear and Eve. At the end of their PhD program, the group began an ambitious project meant to revolutionize cartography: the Dreamer’s Atlas. The Atlas was designed to be a collection of both real and imaginary maps, with one key element: the maps of real places would be depicted in a fantastical style, while the maps of imaginary places would be portrayed in a realistic style. Everyone but Wally was immediately enthusiastic to begin, but despite Wally’s initial resistance, Tam eventually convinced him to participate in the ambitious project.

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary

Romi finishes her story. Learning that Romi has an envelope that she intended to give to Daniel before his death, Nell convinces Romi to give her the envelope instead. Romi ushers Nell out, telling her never to return and leaving her with the enigmatic statement that she “can’t find a place that doesn’t exist” (100). Nell sees a dark-colored car that she suspects is tailing her and escapes into a nearby coffee shop.

There, she opens Romi’s envelope. Inside is a note from Francis to Daniel, as well as a photograph of baby Nell with her parents and a copy of an outdated Sanborn Insurance map of the NYPL, which includes a diagram of the building. The map’s folder bears a compass rose symbol marked with a C.

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary

The attendees of Daniel’s funeral gather for a reception at Swann’s house. Swann is disappointed that Felix isn’t there. Irene greets them, introducing various influential people, including Francis, who authored the note in the envelope that Romi gave to Nell. Irene and Swann are called away, leaving Nell with the others. Francis is quiet and disappears as the rest of the group discusses a map collectors’ game related to the Junk Box map. Nell realizes that the map is very rare and that she has the only remaining copy; the others are rumored to have been destroyed. She also learns that if anyone were to win the map collectors’ game and acquire this map, they would have “bragging rights for life—and a target on their back from the Cartographers” (112). From the conversation, it is clear that the identities of the enigmatic group called the Cartographers is a mystery. Even so, there are sinister rumors of collectors who have disappeared during their participation in this “game.” To deepen the mystery even further, the General Drafting Corporation, which was supposedly the original creator, was put out of business by a copyright infringement lawsuit regarding the map.

Perturbed, Nell leaves the group in search of Francis and finds him talking to her boss, Humphrey. Nell mentions the envelope from Romi and asks Francis about the Sanborn map. Like Romi, Francis, too, warns her away from her investigation and reveals that he has been following her. Irene interrupts them, revealing that Daniel once warned her that “if something strange ever happened to him, [Irene] should suspect foul play” (115). She also mentions that Daniel tried to call Nell the night he died, but the call never went through. Nell tells Irene that she is investigating Daniel’s mystery project; Irene offers Nell a position at the NYPL if she can discover the project’s details. Nell agrees, ecstatic at the chance to return to the NYPL. However, when she tries to return to her conversation with Francis, he avoids her. She follows him to Swann’s study, which only has one entryway, but Francis vanishes.

Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary

Felix goes to a bar that he and Nell used to frequent. He encounters Nell there, and they share their new information. Although Felix encourages her to get her NYPL job back, he also advises her to give the Junk Box map to the police. Nell refuses but becomes emotionally overwhelmed, and they hug. Felix examines the Sanborn map and recalls that there will be a lecture about Sanborn maps at the upcoming New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. They notice that Eve will be one of the Sanborn lecturers there.

Part 2, Chapters 5-10 Analysis

This section deepens the exploration of the themes of Obsession, Letting Go, and Reality Versus Fantasy. It also introduces the symbolism of the Haberson Map as Control and Photos as Community, while further discussing the relationship between the Junk Box Map and Obsession/Secrets and, more briefly, the Compass Rose as Legacy.

Felix’s character contrasts sharply with Nell’s in several significant ways. Specializing in contemporary maps as opposed to ancient ones, Felix is more firmly rooted in the present, while Nell is fixated upon the past. Although Felix, too, was unjustly fired during the Junk Box Incident, he has moved on to the prestigious Haberson Global and embraces his new job developing the Haberson Map, a digital cartography project that relies on technology rather than traditional media to create highly detailed maps. Thus, Felix serves as a foil for Nell, embodying a healthy willingness to let go of the past and look to the future. Nell, on the other hand, becomes more and more attached to the Junk Box map as her investigation progresses, beginning to consider it hers rather than Daniel’s; she also becomes fully determined to uncover its secrets. Her determination grows to the point that Felix becomes concerned with her fixation on the map, but she brushes him off, choosing instead to embrace her growing Obsession.

The motif of Secrets is also further explored when Nell’s search for answers leads her to Romi, whose entire shop consists of secrets and mysteries; in fact, even the location of the shop itself can only be found using the business card that Nell finds tucked into Tam’s portfolio. While Romi clearly wants to distance herself from her past and let it go, Nell’s obsession precludes this; instead, Romi is persuaded to divulge the first major secret associated with the Junk Box map—the beginning of the Cartographers’ friendship and the birth of the Dreamer’s Atlas project. The fact that this admission is only unlocked by Nell’s mention of the Junk Box map further associates the map itself with the ongoing theme of Obsession, for only by embracing this obsession is Nell able to unlock the secrets of the past upon which she is fixated: a cycle that proves just as vicious as her years of rumination on the Junk Box Incident.

Romi’s story and the envelope that she gives Nell also strengthen the sense of Legacy that permeates the novel, for the Sanborn map from Francis also has the Compass Rose sketched on it, deepening the mystery. Thus, the connection between Romi, Nell’s parents, and Nell herself grows stronger, and the long-lasting effects of past events takes on a new significance, for these developments emphasize the importance of one generation imparting knowledge to the next. As isolated as Nell often feels after the Junk Box Incident, especially contrasted with Felix’s luxurious career at Haberson, the Photograph from Francis also reminds her of the Community she still has at her fingertips. For example, Swann and Humphrey support her unconditionally, Felix wants to be a part of her life again, and Nell’s parents clearly loved her in their own ways despite the estrangement that occurred between father and daughter. Even Romi eventually gives in to Nell’s demand for answers, despite her terrified reluctance. Thus, even though Nell has felt isolated from her family and her chosen field for years, she still retains deep connections to this enigmatic Community of cartographers and the mysteries that surround them.

In contrast to the family-oriented connotations of the Junk Box map, the digital Haberson Map immediately becomes a symbol of Control. In the world of the novel, Haberson Global has a much larger reach than international conglomerates like Google and Amazon, as is evidenced by the fact that Felix relies on it rather than the omnipresent Google browser when he searches for information about the Junk Box map online. Similarly, even the FBI depends on the Haberson Map to help solve criminal cases. Felix and his development team are in charge of making the Haberson Map “perfect,” (68) a goal that Felix knows from the beginning is an impossible Fantasy rather than a Reality. However, William, the Secret CEO of Haberson Global, refuses to accept this, and his behavior indicates the belief that greater control over variables equals progress toward perfection. He enacts this belief when he announces that Haberson will take over the NYPL security after the robbery, news that Felix initially celebrates for its benefits to the Haberson Map project. However, he is later reminded of the unpredictability of reality when he watches the NYPL security footage and finds no explanation for how the burglar entered and exited the crime scene.

Finally, the theme of Reality Versus Fantasy, while addressed obliquely through William’s Haberson Map and Nell’s dream of regaining an illustrious career at the NYPL, is most evident through the Dreamer’s Atlas, which by its very nature represents a deliberate contrast between the supposedly distinct categories of reality and fantasy. Cartography is a field that by its very nature represents a deliberate marriage of art with science, and accordingly, the Dreamer’s Atlas is intended to be a collection of maps both real and imaginary, with real places rendered in a fantastical style while imaginary places are rendered in a realistic format. Thus, the playful premise behind The Dreamer’s Atlas causes imaginary maps to seem realistic, while real places would seem imaginary. In Romi’s recollections of her friends, this dichotomy is also reflected in the contrast between Tam and Wally’s characters: Tam is a social, exuberant fan of speculative fiction, while Wally is a quiet, introverted disciple of logical thought. However, while Tam can convince Wally to open his imagination and embrace the idea of the Dreamer’s Atlas, Wally cannot convince her to become more logical. Instead, she continues to be drawn to creative thinkers like Daniel, a connection that Wally refuses to understand.