Elizabeth Kostova's "The Swan Thieves"

When I saw that Elizabeth Kostova had a new book out, I was very excited. I had been swept up in the hype surrounding her debut novel, The Historian, which was a surprising retelling of the Dracula legend. Surprising, mostly, because it was not a book I would have anticipated liking nearly as much as I did - Kostova sweeps you up before you realize what's happening. I don't envy her having to follow up such a debut. I definitely think the international success of The Historian weighed on Kostova and her editors. The first time I picked up The Swan Thieves, I was repulsed by the overly large print. I think they wanted to plump up the book so it resembled the hefty weight and length of The Historian. I was not fooled - it felt like reading a Large Print book. So I decided to wait until the paperback came out - only to learn I'd waited for those months just so the editors/publishers could make the same stupid decision with the font size. Maybe others aren't bothered by this as I am, but it certainly downgraded my experience. (That, combined with a leaking water bottle and subsequent water damage led me to believe I should have opted for the ebook on this one).

The Swan Thieves opens with the renowned painter Robert Olivier taking out a knife and attacking an Impressionist painting in the National Gallery of Art. He is then referred to Andrew Marlow for psychiatric evaluation. He says, "I did it for her" before lapsing into a yearlong silence. Frustrated, Marlow breaks his own rules and probes into Olivier's private lives and personal relationships for answers. The book follows Marlow's investigations, with large sections devoted to the tales of Olivier's wife Kate and his young student/mistress Mary. A parallel storyline follows the letter exchanges between Beatrice de Clerval and her husband's uncle, who is both artistic mentor and romantic love interest to her.

One review I read compared the book to Dan Brown, by which I think it means to compare the elements of art-based mystery. Given my antipathy towards all things Dan Brown, I found this to be a disparaging comment that I don't think Kostova merits. The Swan Thieves is at its best in the lyric descriptions so utterly lacking in The Da Vinci Code (which the HuffPost review did mention as well). At the same time, it gets bogged down in plot. Kostova devotes large chunks of the novel to both Kate and Mary's perspectives, both of which I found to be drawn out and wordy. Kate's narrative, especially, seems to hint at some deep, dark secret about Robert which she seeks to keep, a dark secret never fully realized. (He certainly was not Dracula, to put it mildly, even though Kostova's use of delayed suspense echoed her earlier novel.) I found it incredibly difficult to motivate myself to get through the book, and though the last hundred or so pages were interesting, the art history mystery was not nearly enticing enough to merit the delays along the way, and the happy ending felt overly contrived (especially because the less-than-happy endings of other characters goes pretty much unmentioned).

I have recommended The Historian to several people over the years, but I will refrain (and perhaps even issue a warning against) The Swan Thieves. I enjoyed the parallel historical aspect and the novel had a lot of potential for a good smart-person's mystery, but it unfortunately did not live up to it.