Book Review: The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (GIVEAWAY!)

**This just in: Miriam with Hachette is giving me 5 copies of The Swan Thieves to giveaway! If you are already a follower, than you are automatically entered. If you would like additional entries, then leave me a comment or tweet about this giveaway. The giveaway is restricted to US/Canada, no P.O. Boxes. Winner announced Dec. 4th (book will ship in January)**

The Swan Thieves

Author: Elizabeth Kostova

Little Brown / Hachette

January 2010

ISBN: 0316065781

Imagine a beautiful love story of a talented painter at the dawn of the Impressionst period in the post-Revolution France of 1877. Béatrice has fallen in love with Olivier Vignot, an experienced and well known painter, a friend of her husband’s, old enough to be her father or grandfather, and who fought in the Revolution and lost his wife in a horrifying twist of fate at the barricades.

Imagine that her most beautiful painting, The Swan Thieves, never saw public view, depicting a naked woman laying by a stream with a swan at her side, with two men approaching in the shadows. The swan’s wings spread in anxious defense. Do the intruders come for the swan? Who is the swan?

The narrative of the Impressionist era lovers is their letters, preserved through the many intervening years...

Interspersed with the historical romance, is the story of a talented artist, Robert Oliver, who has come under the care of a psychiatrist in a treatment center, also a painter. This man will not speak and paints only the picture of the same woman in many different poses, shadings, states of dress, and mood. Oliver was institutionalized after being interdicted trying to stab a painting in the National Gallery in Washington. There were two paintings on the wall. A painting of the famous scene of Leda and a swan, generally assumed to be the God Zeus in the form in which he appeared to ravish the beautiful mortal woman. Leda and the Swan also contained a prone naked woman and a swan in obvious distress. The plaque for Leda and the Swan showed that it had been purchased by Gilbert Thomas, a Parisian gallery owner of the same earlier period. The second painting was a self-portrait of Thomas with coins rolling through his fingers. Oliver’s mother was French, a World War II war bride.

Dr. Marlow is Oliver’s psychiatrist, fascinated with the psychology of creativity and disorders that plague brilliant people. He becomes intrigued by the silence and fame of the painter, as well as the haunting beauty of his many paintings and sketches of a woman. Who? As the bachelor doctor traces Oliver’s life, he experiences an ocean full of emotions, including falling in love himself.

The path of Dr. Marlow leads to France, where the mysteries of the letters of Béatrice and Olivier Vignot seem to provide the key to unlocking the mysteries of Robert Oliver. The reader is treated to the beauty of villages made famous by the Impressionists, Étretat, Marly-le-Roi, and Grémière. We are also introduced to an engaging, centenarian Frenchman who lived with the daughter of Béatrice, Aude Vignot until her death. Robert Oliver had traveled many of the same paths.

Present, past, and future are woven together in this masterpiece with dazzling skill. The often vague relationships of people in history, or silent bodies still breathing, create a collage of mystery for Dr. Marlow to explore. What bewitched Robert Oliver? What is the connection to him of the people in the letters? Why would he want to stab The Swan Thieves? Why was he so vexed by the woman in his paintings and sketches? Who was she?

The beginning and ending of The Swan Thieves explore another painting of a woman walking in rather formal dress through the snow having delivered something someplace in the night. Could this be Béatrice or Aude? Delivering a clue? To whom?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this wonderful novel. I found it to be thought-provoking. The veritable fountain of emotional relationships, and possibilities, could each become the grist for more engaging writing from Ms. Kostova.

When I was done, I had an inkling of my initial questions: who or what is the swan?

If you love art, romance, literary fiction, excellent story telling, and page-turning emotion, you will love this marvelously crafted novel. It is a deserving successor to Ms. Kostova’s prior # 1 New York Times Bestseller, The Historian. It will be available in January so make sure it is on your reading list..

Warms-

CYM

**Thank you Miriam from Hachette for the opportunity to review this book**