The Swan Thieves
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life - solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve hope.
2.7 out of 5 based on 9 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
576 |
| RRP |
£16.99 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-1847442406 |
| Publisher |
Sphere |
| |
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life - solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve hope.
Reviews
The Economist
Vanessa Berridge
"Her second book, I don’t doubt, will also be a winner. Apart from anything else The Swan Thieves is an intriguing detective story that kept me guessing from start to finish. But there’s more to it than that: Kostova writes with rare sensitivity, talking about “the suspense of loving someone at the far edge of life”. Much revolves around the nature of art. Her descriptions are as richly textured as the paintings themselves. But they never unbalance what are three moving, beautifully evoked love stories."
15/01/2010
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The Times
John O'Connell
"The Swan Thieves is too long and loses momentum during Mary’s unnecessarily detailed account of her relationship with Oliver. It also romanticises art and artists to a degree that some will find excessive. That said, it’s an atmospheric, richly entertaining piece of work, much more ambitious than The Historian, and retains a human scale even when it’s nudging its readers in supernatural directions. Unusually, Kostova writes about the past more confidently than she does of the present."
16/01/2010
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The Financial Times
Paul Magrs
"Like her 2005 debut, The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova’s new novel beguiles, but perhaps a bit too languidly and at too great a length… The book resonates and teems with delicious sentences about colour, light, and texture… I was much less interested, though, in the present tense flashbacks to the 19th century than I was the latter-day chapters."
01/02/2010
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The Washington Post
Donna Rifkind
"In addition to moving the story along, all these characters have lots of interesting, intelligent things to say about the actual sensation that accompanies the work of painting -- the scratch of sketch, the glop of color, the smell of linseed. If only their observations didn't all sound so much alike. This was a common complaint about the voices in "The Historian," and although Kostova's characterizations are much rounder and fuller this time, she's still having trouble making people sound different. "
12/01/2010
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The Guardian
Joanna Briscoe
"As a portrait of a monster with a heavenly gift, the novel is interesting. But it is simply far too long, and rarely achieves real emotional authenticity… While the socking supernatural quest behind The Historian gave it the momentum of fear and mystery, this more traditional and groaningly long-winded search is paradoxically less convincing, and appears to put literary aspiration above storytelling."
23/01/2010
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The Independent
Simmy Richman
"Better writers than Kostova have tried to bring painting to life on the novel's page and failed, and dialogue such as "I don't think painters have the answers about their own paintings. No one knows anything about a painting except the painting itself" doesn't help. But for all the talk that this is a book about obsession and love, the most disappointing thing about The Swan Thieves is the slightly creepy fact that, within its way too many pages, innocent young women keep falling for the stereotype of the experienced and wise older man, so that in the end it reads more like Woody Allen turning his hand to literary fiction than any serious threat to the writers of the Victorian era which Kostova so clearly cherishes."
17/01/2010
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The New Yorker
Books Briefly Noted
"…Kostova’s precisely constructed sentences give an air of detachment to what should be passionate love stories. More damaging, the solution to the central mystery—why Oliver tried to destroy the canvas—is apparent from early on."
25/01/2010
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The Observer
Lisa O'Kelly
"It might have helped if Kostova had given Oliver the chance to tell his own story. Instead he is the sum of others' accounts of him - and these accounts are monumentally unflattering. In fact, the novel often reads like a study of the male creative ego and its complacently assumed right to indulge itself whatever the effect on those who love and support it. But Kostova doesn't properly question this. Instead, she romanticises art and artists."
24/01/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Judith Flanders
"Elizabeth Kostova’s debut novel, The Historian, was a smash hit, a vampire-romp that capered across Europe dragging its breathlessly giggling readers in its wake. The Swan Thieves, her follow-up, will also leave its readers laughing, but for all the wrong reasons... This constant return to the beginning palls. Worse, all the characters share a level of pretentiousness that makes the reader want to slap them silly"
25/01/2010
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