Book of the Week: The Swan Thieves

I enjoyed Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel, The Historian, so I was excited to receive a copy of the author's new book, The Swan Thieves, to read. The novel is about art and obsession, madness and love--you know, all the good stuff. It also seemed to me to be more character-focused rather than plot centric.

The story is a simple mystery, which slowly unravels as the book unfolds. A celebrated artist, Robert Oliver, is arrested after trying to stab a painting at the National Gallery of Art. Oliver is entrusted into the care of psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Marlow; but maddeningly for Marlow, refuses to speak after his first day in the hospital. Marlow's quest to find out more about Oliver, his obsessions and illness, and why he would have attempted to destroy the painting, is the essential premise of the novel.

Marlow first travels to North Carolina to interview Oliver's ex-wife, Kate, who's recollections in the book are told in the first person. Similarly, when Marlow interviews the elusive Mary, another of Oliver's women, her tales of her time with the painter are told in the first person--ostensibly in the form of letters she decides to write Marlow rather than telling her story to him verbally. This seemed to me a strange way to get the fuller detail of Mary's story from her head rather than her mouth. While both women seem content to overshare with the doctor, and do go into minute detail, the big mysteries surrounding Oliver and his obsessions remain until the end of the book. It was difficult for me to swallow that Oliver's wife, the woman he lived with for more than a decade, would not have more answers.

It also seemed that neither Marlow, Kate nor Mary--despite telling their stories in their own words--had a clearly defined character. They kind of bled into one another and the person I was most sympathetic to was the long-suffering Kate. (I still wonder if Marlow ever got in touch with her to share his eventual discoveries with her). For some reason I just couldn't warm much to Marlow himself.

Kostova brings the past into the present by interspersing letters from post-Revolution France, at the dawn of the Impressionist period, into the novel. The writers are a young, married artist and her husband's uncle, also a painter. While I was interested to see how the story told by the letters folded into the modern day narrative I can't say I was overly taken by Béatrice, the uncle Olivier Vignot, or her husband Yves.

I enjoyed Kostova's descriptive ability and her treatment of the artist and their process. The minor mysteries kept me reading (mostly I wanted to know more about the object of Robert's obsession), but the climax and dénouement seemed pat, almost too easy. For a novel of this length I would have thought more than a few chapters would have been dedicated to the payoff. Despite this I enjoyed The Swan Thieves and getting lost in Kostova's world of artists and passion even if at times I found it hard to suspend disbelief.