Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
The Swan Thieves
by Elizabeth Kostova, Little, Brown and Company, 2010
Reviewed by Judi Morrel
If you are an admirer of Elizabeth Kostova's best-selling 2005
novel The Historian, you will be pleased as punch with her
latest offering, The Swan Thieves. And if you
haven't read either one, you've missed the delightful opportunity
to transport yourself back and forth temporally and range
hither and yon geographically, all the while trying to unravel some
historically based mystery. In The Historian,
Kostova's unifying theme is the Dracula legend; in this book, it's
painting. The story revolves around a contemporary American
painter, Robert Oliver, who has been hospitalized after attacking a
painting in the National Gallery. Robert, who refuses to talk and
obsessively sketches and paints portraits of the same woman over
and over, is being treated by psychiatrist Andrew Marlow, himself a
painter. In attempting to help his patient, Marlow himself
becomes obsessed with finding out who the woman is. In his
quest, he pursues an unconventional path, along the way
encountering a series of love letters written in France during the
19th century. Using the voices in these letters
and with assistance from Oliver's former wife, Marlow is finally
able to understand the tragedy and mystery surrounding a group of
French impressionist painters. In a rich style similar to that
employed in The Historian, Kostova brings to life several
locales, both old and new, and uses a set of narratives, all of
which converge to help solve the central mystery, one whose
resolution is unclear until the final pages.
- Judi Morrel is Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences at Butler University.