The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves

 

 

The Swan thieves by Elizabeth Kostova’s second book and it didn’t disappoint. Although it didn’t move me and engulf me like her first novel “The Historian” did, I must say I liked this book a lot. The book revolves around the obsessive and wonderfully gifted genius painter Robert Oliver. He is brilliant and his work is extremely impressive so why is this man in the care of Andre Marlow? A renowned psychiatrist known for having the ability to make even stones talk. Oliver has gone to a museum and nearly destroyed a beautiful painting of Leda and the Swan by Gilbert Thomas. Why would a painter do that? That is how the book begins with Marlow only going on the first words and only words of Robert “I did it for her?”. But who is she? She is Beatrice de Clerval a female painter of the early Impressionism period, little known but clearly a genius with a brush. He paints her as if from memory in many forms. She is his secret muse. Oliver loves her but his love is for the long dead. So it is up to Dr. Marlow to go through Oliver’s history to his past life with his wife, his lover, and then to find out the life of the face perpetually staring from the easel of Robert Oliver.

Bitch Please!

So here’s the thing, the mystery of wanting to find out who this woman was kind of what kept me going into the story in the first couple of pages. I quickly found out that I REALLY didn’t like the main character. To me he seemed to, patronizing and careful. He talks all weird and, and this is weird for me to admit, I could never visualize him as real person. Usually with a book your characters, if they are well written, haunt you and you wish with all your soul that somehow they were real. Like for me it would be Lestat de Lioncourt from Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles”. When I was thirteen after reading “The Vampire Lestat ” for the first time, I longed to see him floating outside my window with that ironic smile and golden hair, befriending me like Louis, Marius and Gretchen the nun (although nothing sexual) or David perhaps (later I made this association when I read “the tale of the Body Thief”). I wanted him to tell me his life story not read it thru through Rice’s voice. It sounds silly but that’s what good writers are supposed to do, make their characters so real you want to be a part of their world. I could go on with books, series that have engulfed me into their fantasy worlds and their characters that mesmerizing and imperfect have beguiled me. That being said, Kostova has failed with her main character to be able to, at least with me, to make that connection. Marlow is just that: a character. He really never comes to life like Oliver, Mary, Kate and especially Beatrice de Clerval. I believe her failing is that Kostova made her main character a man and he sounds like a woman, or more like a woman wrote him. There is nothing manly about him, more of like projections of what a man is supposed to be like. Despite this however I enjoyed the book, it was about 600 pages and it was a bit tedious what with all the painting descriptions and the unceasing descriptions of woods and nature that my inner city girl can’t appreciate fully. I wish that Robert Oliver was real and that I could see his collection of Beatrice de Clerval. That is primordial that you, dear reader, understand she makes you want those images to be real. I googled the image that Robert had supposedly ravaged and no it wasn’t a real painter and yes there it was Leda but I do have to say that the Leda in the painting and Leda in the description are two different things but I’ll let you figure out the differences if you decide to read this book. The story is mesmerizing and sometimes you wonder why some parts are necessary but it is all essential. In the end it all comes together falling into place neatly and clearly just there. Like the Historian the real fun is in trying to fit into place the story you get in pieces and painstakingly through letters. But is in the reveal you get the reward.