The Swan Thieves – Elizabeth Kostova                                2/10

This is the story of a famous, yet troubled artist (Robert Oliver) who attacks a painting and the psychiatrist (Andrew Marlow) who attempts to understand why. In doing so, he delves further and further into Oliver’s life, by reaching out to the people who are important to him.

Oliver is the troubled genius who, having suffered some kind of breakdown that is not at first identifiable, manages to baffle even the accomplished psychiatrist Marlow, by remaining mute for large parts of their time together.

In order to unlock Oliver’s condition, Marlow embarks on various travels to meet the women that have played instrumental roles in the artist’s life. In doing so the reader experiences a variety of different perspectives as the narrative switches between the important characters in the tale. One chapter is given to Marlow for example, then the next two belong to Oliver’s ex-wife, then we go back in time to nineteenth century impressionist France and so on.

If the first 100 or so pages of this proved refreshing, then the next 500 pages prove to be mind-numbing. In what I suppose is an effort to create the impact of mental illness on relationships, the reader is subjected to an almost blow by blow account of the Oliver’s early relationship and then married life, then un-married life, the majority of which is really not necessary to the story.

The same can be said of Oliver’s mistress Mary and the lengthy passages that are attributed to her. As more and more of the novel is taken over by unimportant description, the pace of the tale starts to wane and eventually it becomes a chore. One scene stands out in my mind as the epitome of this pointlessness; Mary is describing a morning in her life some years earlier, down to the detail of how she folded her sweater and what she ate for breakfast. Not only is it unbelievable that someone would remember those inconsequential things, they are exactly that: inconsequential.

There are also a couple of chapters given to a trip Marlow takes to visit his father. I suppose if I thought hard enough about it I could attribute this part of the book to some sort of journey into his own past, to look for answers and advice from his father as a mentor, the whole section being a search for reassurance and parental instruction perhaps. I don’t want to think that hard about it though because it’s not worth it.

I think some of my disappointment might have stemmed from the realisation that this book is far less of a thriller than it tries to be (and is billed as) and actually is far more of a love story. Not a good love story at that either. Kostova tries to make the love stories of the present mirror the love story of the 1870s, but rather than being clever, it is just boring.

Added to this is the rather disappointing realisation that every character is the same, bar Oliver who sadly, doesn’t feature nearly enough. When he does feature it is mostly through the eyes of the people who surround him, and they all perceive him in exactly the same way, which rather defeats the point of having all these different perspectives. Or maybe that is the point, in which case it has been handled badly.

I suppose it is fair enough to assume that people who like similar interests will become friends, lovers and even patients of certain psychiatrists (Oliver is handed over to Marlow because he is a known art lover) but Kostova really doesn’t try very hard to distinguish between the individuals in her tale. They all spend every minute of their spare time painting, they all have paint under their nails that they cannot scrub off and all they ever seem to eat is soup.

One delightful customer review I read online had this to say about the characters, which I think sums up my thoughts rather well: “Every single character was an annoying, pompous, jackass and I hope they all die horribly.”

I liked the idea of this book, but I was really disappointed with the execution. It’s certainly not one I would recommend and in the past I would have stopped reading before the end, but only carried on so I could finish this review. Apparently her first book, The Historian, is much better.