The Swan Thieves

by Elizabeth Kostova

Book Overview

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlow, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031606579X
• ISBN13: 9780316065795
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

how i love her writing

please write more books. i have read all of your books 2x...

Layered, subtle, beautiful

I'm about 100 pages from finishing the book and want to savor every last page. I was surprised at the average of only three stars for the reviews here. After reading them, though, I see the problem: -don't expect this to be like THE HISTORIAN; enjoy it for its difference -if you don't like changing viewpoints and narrators and get confused at changing time frames, this may not be to your liking BUT-if you enjoy and appreciate art and the artist's world and eye for detail, you'll love it - this book has many layers, like an onion, that unfold slowly and subtly, and there's a beauty in that - it's a love story, a tale of obession, and a research into the past I loved this book, found all the characters appealing, and enjoyed the beautiful language that is used to describe everything with an artist's eye If you liked GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING , which really has less plot going on, you will enjoy this one.

You won't be disappointed......an intelligent read.

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova is a fitting sophomore effort following up on her huge hit The Historian. Robert Oliver is a gifted and very troubled artist. The story essentially opens with Robert attempting to slash the Leda, a painting at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. This attempt at ruining a work of art lands Robert in a psychiatric ward and under the care of Andrew Marlow. Because Robert Oliver refuses to cooperate with Marlow's efforts at helping him, Marlow, also a painter, must look else where for help in aiding his patient. It is largely through this effort that the other characters in the story appear on center stage. There is also a collection of old letters, written in French and dating from 1879, that Robert keeps in his possession and reads frequently and these add to the mystery of the story. Without giving too much away, let me say that I found The Swan Thieves to be a completely engrossing read almost from the beginning. I read the review from the Washington Post, and honestly I expect more from a respected reviewer. I found the characters in The Swan Thieves to be completely believable, well constructed, and with enough back-story to make them interesting. All of the major movers in the story; Andrew, the therapist; Robert his former wife, Kate; and his former lover, Mary are artists. That they share personality traits or interests doesn't make them flat or one dimensional. I found the storyline of The Swan Thieves to be completely engrossing and entertaining. The details Kostova includes in her story, and there are a lot, provide a richness and depth to the story making both the characters and the lives they live multi-dimensional. It's the difference between broth and soup. The Swan Thieves is not pulp-fiction but a finely constructed story that will surprise you in the end. Give The Swan Thieves a look. If you don't want to buy, check it out from your library. You won't be sorry. For the love of books and libraries.... Peace to all.

It Opened My Eyes

Elizabeth Kostova's second novel, The Swan Thieves, is sure to be as big, if not bigger, than her first,The Historian. Told through letters and first person accounts of different characters The Swan Thieves is a sweeping story that begins in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. when famed artist Robert Oliver attacks a century-old Impressionist painting with his pocket knife. Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, himself an art lover and amateur painter is called to work with Oliver, who has been hospitalized and refuses to speak. Realizing that to be able to help Robert he must know more about him, Andrew begins a quest that takes him to the women who have loved the artist, and to a packet of ancient letters telling the story of a young female Impressionist with a tragic ending to her career. Four romances, sweeping descriptions, and interesting, truly human characters: Is it any wonder that I couldn't put The Swan Thieves down? I absolutely had to know who had written the letters, and when that was revealed, what happened to the author after the last epistle. [FWA: fancy word alert!] Why, even though he'd always been a tempermental artist, would Robert Oliver attack the painting of Leda, a woman from Greek mythology whom Zeus visited in the form of a swan? Robert's obsessed mind is revealed to the reader through Andrew's visits with his ex-wife Kate and former lover, Mary. Through all his years as a professor, artist-in-residence, and sought-after commissions, Robert Oliver has only wanted to paint one thing. A woman's face. The same face in different lighting, styles, and clothing, and all from a memory or imagined, whichever remains to be discovered. The one-sided correspondence from a young Parisian matron of 1879 named Beatrice de Clerval Vignon to her husband's uncle shows us the early years of the Impressionist movement, the snobbery of the Paris Salon, and the social mores of late 19th century France. The primary characters were vividly real, each having personal goals, yet demonstrating when attaining their own desires may hurt another. Even Robert Oliver, in some ways the epitome of a narcissistic artist knows how his behavior negatively works on his family, although he ultimately is powerless to put his own wants aside. Elizabeth Kostova's writing is more tightly honed than in her first novel, which was wonderful written. In The Swan Thieves the first person accounts are each written so individually I soon was able to know who was telling the story without checking the chapter header. I enjoyed The Swan Thieves so much that I ran out and got The Historian, which I had been reluctant to read for some time, not really having any interest in what I had perceived might be just another vampire story. As I said in my review, I couldn't have been more wrong, and I loved the adventure and history of The Historian as much as I enjoyed the passion and artistry of The Swan Thieves.

Past Lives / Enduring Love

Robert Oliver, a distinguished, yet troubled painter, has attacked a painting at the National Gallery of Art--an action which has landed him in a mental institution under the care of psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe. Marlowe, an art enthusiast and painter himself, becomes deeply fascinated with his patient and the history behind Robert Oliver's strange behavior. As he attempts to heal his patient, the doctor is met with obstinence and silence; Oliver will not share his story. Determined to find answers, Marlowe not only becomes involved in his patient's life and relationships, but also with the life of Beatrice de Cleval, and her mentor, artist Olivier Vignot, forbidden lovers from the 19th century. Who is Robert Oliver and what is his passionate connection to the painting and the two lovers? Why is Robert so obsessed with the love letters between Olivier Vignot and Beatrice? Why does he cling to them and read them over and over? Is it mental illness, or something else? This book kept me guessing, right up to the finale. It left me pondering the concept of past lives and loves. I felt a hint of Somewhere In Time, and wanted to believe. Kostova brings, once again, something wonderful to the written page--something that will enthrall readers from start to finish. It is well-written, multi-layered, containing all the elements of a great story: desire, passion, obsession, forbidden love, mystery, historical romance, and the determination of the human spirit. It is an extraordinary book that I believe, not only mystery lovers will like, but artists and lovers of art will enjoy, as well. I found it to be an elegant, tender, highly psychological read, with insight into the world of art and the human condition.

"We are never really alert to our destinies, are we?"

The central figure of Kostova's impressive novel is a gifted artist, Robert Oliver, who is arrested when he attacks a painting hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, "Leda". In the painting a mortal woman is ravished by Zeus in the form of a swan, a theme that is woven through the novel, a mystery begun in the days of the French Impressionists. Thus does the author join the stories of two centuries, the late 19th and 20th, the characters as entwined as their paths through life. When psychiatrist Andrew Marlow accepts Robert Oliver as a patient in Goldengrove, the larger-than-life, enigmatic painter utters only a few sentences before he refuses to speak at all. Both intrigued and frustrated, Marlow makes it his particular mission to learn what has brought this talented man to this state, discovering along the way not only the circumstances of the heartbreaking world of genius but the limitations of his calling. Kostova succeeds on so many levels in this layered, passionate novel, a study of human failings and the price of true art, from Oliver's own painful journey to the women who have known and loved him, as well as a female artist of great promise, a contemporary of the Impressionists, Beatrice de Cleval, and her mentor, artist Olivier Vignot. From one century to another, Kostova explores the unique and tortuous landscape of the dedicated artist, the power and beauty of creativity and the emotional devastation in its wake. She allows the reader to fall in love with an unattainable genius on an impossible quest, to feel the pain of a wife who isn't enough and a lover who cannot keep what she does not own. Then there is Beatrice de Cleval, one of the few women to be embraced by the great Salon of Paris and the inspiration for her powerful last painting, a seminal work that contains the heart of the mystery. From one century to another, Kostova never loses focus, her characters beautifully rendered, their hopes and flaws, dreams and failures. A great love story fuels a mystery in 1877 that reaches into the 20th century and the world of an artist consumed by his particular obsession. From the windswept coast in Normandy to the predawn hours as Oliver paints furiously in his attic, the smell of turpentine is pungent, the pain of creativity tactile. Blending Impressionist France with more modern day Washington, DC, this is a sweeping novel of love and its costs, of artistic genius and its demands, a grand tale that is both revelatory and shocking, where spirit escapes the boundaries of daily life. Luan Gaines/2010.