The Swan Thieves
Mar. 27th, 2025 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova is a sprawling, sort-of historical, sort-of mystery novel about a psychiatrist trying to get to the bottom of why an artist tries to stab a painting in a museum.
The writing is good, the characters are interesting and layered, I was engaged by the story and wanted to find out the answers to all the questions the narrative raised. And the ultimate conclusion to the main mystery was very satisfying, meaning I was glad overall that I'd read the book.
BUT - I had some big reservations about various aspects of this book.
First - the main protagonist, Dr Andrew Marlow. I find it interesting that a female author should choose this male character as her first-person protagonist, especially given his general attitude towards women. Despite criticising this very thing in his patient, Marlow fantasises very inappropriately about every women he meets in the story (including a museum assistant he interacts with for only a couple of minutes, who is more than 30 years his junior).
Second - and this is a major pet peeve for me - the book is presented as an account Marlow is writing, ten years after the main events of the story, and its nature as that kind of narrative makes no sense. Nobody, ten years after the fact, would write 600 pages of incredibly detailed direct action. Similarly, Kate's sections and Mary's sections are presented as oral (Kate) or written (Mary) accounts they provide to Marlow about their time with the patient in question - and nobody would do this in the amount of detail presented. Added to that, there's the 1870s narrative, which starts out as letters Marlow is having translated, but then morphs into a much more nebulous account that Marlow isn't privy to - so how can he put it in his book? Unless he's making it up after the fact - though this isn't made clear.
Third - there are three complex and layered female main characters who all get their own perspective - but they are only included in relation to how they connect with the men in the story. And, while all three do, at least on the surface, control their destinies in terms of those relationships, they are also presented as being very much in thrall to the men and not necessarily fully in command of their choices. At one point, Mary comments: "It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men." Well, quite...
Fourth - although I was engaged throughout, I did find the book quite ponderous overall and struggled a bit to get through it. It certainly could have been a lot shorter, since very little actually happens in real terms. That's not necessarily a bad thing - and the deep exploration of all the characters' inner lives and conflicts is interesting and well done. But still - a bit much.
Fifth - for a book with a psychiatrist protagonist, the mental health representation isn't all that great...
Sixth - one of the main mysteries that's set up fairly near the start is the question of the identity of the women the patient keeps painting. I felt the answer to this became fairly obvious some time before the protagonist discovered it - but the 'big reveal' of his discovery was presented as a real shock, when he should have been able to figure it out quite easily (and one of the other characters turned out to have known it all along).
Seventh - one of the main romance subplots really annoyed me - because it was inadvisable, unethical, inappropriate - and not even believable, on either side...
So - a lot to criticise - but still a pretty good read, all in all.
The writing is good, the characters are interesting and layered, I was engaged by the story and wanted to find out the answers to all the questions the narrative raised. And the ultimate conclusion to the main mystery was very satisfying, meaning I was glad overall that I'd read the book.
BUT - I had some big reservations about various aspects of this book.
First - the main protagonist, Dr Andrew Marlow. I find it interesting that a female author should choose this male character as her first-person protagonist, especially given his general attitude towards women. Despite criticising this very thing in his patient, Marlow fantasises very inappropriately about every women he meets in the story (including a museum assistant he interacts with for only a couple of minutes, who is more than 30 years his junior).
Second - and this is a major pet peeve for me - the book is presented as an account Marlow is writing, ten years after the main events of the story, and its nature as that kind of narrative makes no sense. Nobody, ten years after the fact, would write 600 pages of incredibly detailed direct action. Similarly, Kate's sections and Mary's sections are presented as oral (Kate) or written (Mary) accounts they provide to Marlow about their time with the patient in question - and nobody would do this in the amount of detail presented. Added to that, there's the 1870s narrative, which starts out as letters Marlow is having translated, but then morphs into a much more nebulous account that Marlow isn't privy to - so how can he put it in his book? Unless he's making it up after the fact - though this isn't made clear.
Third - there are three complex and layered female main characters who all get their own perspective - but they are only included in relation to how they connect with the men in the story. And, while all three do, at least on the surface, control their destinies in terms of those relationships, they are also presented as being very much in thrall to the men and not necessarily fully in command of their choices. At one point, Mary comments: "It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men." Well, quite...
Fourth - although I was engaged throughout, I did find the book quite ponderous overall and struggled a bit to get through it. It certainly could have been a lot shorter, since very little actually happens in real terms. That's not necessarily a bad thing - and the deep exploration of all the characters' inner lives and conflicts is interesting and well done. But still - a bit much.
Fifth - for a book with a psychiatrist protagonist, the mental health representation isn't all that great...
Sixth - one of the main mysteries that's set up fairly near the start is the question of the identity of the women the patient keeps painting. I felt the answer to this became fairly obvious some time before the protagonist discovered it - but the 'big reveal' of his discovery was presented as a real shock, when he should have been able to figure it out quite easily (and one of the other characters turned out to have known it all along).
Seventh - one of the main romance subplots really annoyed me - because it was inadvisable, unethical, inappropriate - and not even believable, on either side...
So - a lot to criticise - but still a pretty good read, all in all.
