Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life--solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the ...
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Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life--solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Ranging from American museums to the coast of Normandy, from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love, THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, the losses of history, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
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The story is a tangle of relationships with a single thread the binds them together and that is the joy of painting.
If you are and artist you will feel this to your bones. If you are not an artist you will wonder how you can discover if it isnt to late for you to become one.
Thats how an author becomes great.
Barbara M
Mar 24, 2011
Great
This book, like The Historian, is a wonderful read.
robert j
Nov 11, 2010
Very disappointing book, particularly after reading the exciting "Historian". Frankly, I was exhausted by it at the end and had no idea why i wasted so much time wading through the endless pages of nothing. If you have insomnia problems, this could be the cure.
COVER2COVER
Jun 11, 2010
I am sorry to say that this book was a huge disappointment to me. I so loved "The Historian" that I eagerly bought this one hoping to enjoy beautiful, lyrical writing and suspensful story. I'm afraid the author may have rushed this one.
The story is painfully slow and the writing dull. I was not impressed with the character of Dr. Marlow. He was not a very convincing psychiatrist, (and not all that ethical, either). The characters are flat and the story does not begin to actually move until the last hundred pages, and then everything just wraps up too neatly. I almost had to snort out loud at his patients' miraculous recovery and how the "Dr." just allows him to walk out the door after speaking a few sentences! I hope that Ms. Kostova will step back, take a breath (and her time) and make a comeback with the gift she showed in "The Historian". I don't mind waiting.
TeriK
Feb 2, 2010
Almost a Masterpiece
Why would an accomplished artist enter the Nat?l Gallery, pass by one exhibit after another, only to suddenly pull out a knife and attempt to destroy a beautiful painting? The Swan Thieves moves seamlessly from the age of early impressionist painting to the modern psychiatric hospital, from the New York art scene to a small North Carolina college. Elizabeth Kostova has given us a tightly controlled look at the development of one artistic mind, and anothers attempt to understand it. The fact that she accomplishes this without Robert Oliver speaking more than a few words demonstrates her great understanding of the craft of writing. I recommend this book.
