The Swan Thieves

Well I’ve fallen behind on my book reviews and now have three books read and un-reviewed. And since they're all 2011 reads (although the last was completed in 2012) they don't even count towards Mrs.' book challenge. First up is Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves. I read Kostova’s debut novel The Historian a couple of years ago, and although it was mildly disappointing overall, I guess it was entertaining enough to make me pause in a book store to read the back of her follow up The Swan Thieves. And I guess the back cover of this book was intriguing enough for me to purchase it.

After attacking a painting with a knife in the National Gallery of Art, artist Robert Oliver is admitted to a psychiatric hospital under the care of our narrator Andrew Marlow. Robert refuses to speak and spends all of his time drawing and painting pictures of the same woman. Unsure of how to deal with his patient, Marlow delves into Oliver’s life, first by going to see his ex-wife and then tracking down Mary, a former art student of Robert and the woman he was living with after leaving his wife. Both provide further evidence of Robert’s obsession over this mysterious woman and frustration over his madness. Slowly, through the information from the women in the artist’s life and through a packet of late 19th century letters that Robert possesses, Marlow begins to piece together the identity of the unknown woman that is the apparent cause of Oliver’s mania.

The main focus of this novel is obsession. From Robert’s obsession over the mystery woman to Marlow’s own obsession with discovering her identity, and from Marlow’s growing obsession over Mary to the obsession contained in those 19th century letters between a young French artist by the name of Beatrice de Clerval and her husband’s uncle Olivier, we're presented with the different ways in which the obsessions drive each character to act in ways that could threaten to damage or even ruin the lives they’ve built. And we see the lengths they'll go through to follow through with these obsessions in the hope they will lead to happiness.

While I’d go as far as saying I enjoyed The Swan Thieves a tad bit more than The Historian, I don’t think I’d go as far as to recommend it. Probably not coincidentally I had similar complaints about both novels. First, my copy is 561 pages, and as has been my recent complaint about several novels, I think the same story could have been told in 400 or so. I repeatedly found myself hoping that Kostova would just get to the point already. And the main thing that bothered me was the resolution to the mystery (if you can call it that since there didn’t end up being a big reveal that wasn’t already laid out for the reader), which left me underwhelmed to say the least. As far as I can tell (spoiler alert?) the main takeaway is that Robert was just crazy. I still never understood why he was obsessed with this woman. And once Marlow figures out the woman's identity and story and confronts Robert with the information he's found, I’m not sure how this provides any resolution for Robert. And it sure didn’t help Beatrice and Olivier, who, you know, lived a century before. Did I miss something? Did I fall asleep between pages 456 and 521? The world may never know. But what I do know is that when I invest in 561 pages of reading, I expect a little more of a reward. I most likely won't be rushing out for Kostova's next novel.

Next Up: A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan