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    The Swan Thieves
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    The Swan Thieves
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    The Swan Thieves
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Swan Thieves

    Written by Elizabeth Kostova

    Narrated by Treat Williams, Erin Cottrell, John Lee and

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJan 12, 2010
    ISBN9781600247460
    Unavailable
    The Swan Thieves
    Author

    Elizabeth Kostova

    MARY SHELLEY was born in London in 1797, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, famous radical writers of the day. In 1814 she met and soon fell in love with the then-unknown Percy Bysshe Shelley. In December 1816, after Shelley's first wife committed suicide, Mary and Percy married. They lived in Italy from 1818 until 1822, when Shelley drowned, whereupon Mary returned to London to live as a professional writer of novels, stories, and essays until her death in 1851. GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer. He both cofounded the Guadalajara International Film Festival and formed his own production company—the Tequila Gang. However, he is most recognized for his Academy Award-winning film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received Nebula and Hugo awards, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction. ELIZABETH KOSTOVA is the author of the bestselling novel The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan.

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    Reviews for The Swan Thieves

    3.5/5

    909 ratings155 reviews

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    • 4/5


      Listening to this and really enjoying it.
    • 3/5
      I was trying out this recommended by a friend author and found this book. This story dragged on and in for me. I zipped they to the end to learn why Beatrice has stopped painting. Great reason, and unexpected. Never got into Robert’s mental illness issue.
    • 4/5
      compelling story of a French artist in 1860's, her talent, unusual love affair and eventual blackmail that stops her painting - and a current day unbalanced artist obsessed with her work, a psychiatrist who he won't talk to, his ex -wife and ex-girlfiriend who the psychiatsrist falls in love with - complicated relationships with the background of paintings. Not at all convinced that Robert after a year or more in a mental institution not speaking, suddenly announces that he feels better and is allowed to leave - and he doesn't know that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant and about to marry his psychiatrist.
    • 3/5
      This is a difficult book to review for me. The Historian was one of my favorites, and I was looking forward to this second offering from Kostova. I thought the writing in this book as beautiful, and I really love the author's ability to develop characters.

      My issue with this novel is that the story was very much a slow burn. There was never a moment where I felt that I couldn't stop turning pages or couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I enjoyed it every time I picked it up to read, but the story did not have a big draw for me. I enjoyed the art history and the appreciate of artistic genius described in this book, but I wish the plot of the story moved along and had a bit more drama.

      Still looking forward to any future work from Kostova.
    • 3/5
      This was a slog. I persisted and The Swan Thieves finally resolved into a decent read, but if I'd known what an ordeal it was going to be I would have never started in the first place. A talented, but deranged artist marries an imoverished, mousey, helpless pseudo artist. She gives up her career and starts churning out babies, while he's irresponsibly running about with other women, nurturing his obsessions, and generally unable to provide financial or emotional support. These people were tiresome. After the artist commits a crime, he is institutionalized. His psychiatrist becomes obsessed with figuring him out. Said psychiatrist was so wildly unprofessional that in the real world he would be stripped of his license and publicly castigated. The writing was fine, but the meandering was burdensome. It was an okay read, but not worth the investment of time. Read something else.
    • 3/5
      A contemporary artist (and art teacher) begins to obsess over a painting and an artist from the past, leading a psychologist (who is a capable amateur artist himself) into an investigation that plays out both in the present day and in the late 19th century. There's a lot to like about this one, but there are also at least two major flaws with it. First and foremost, it's bloated. It's a good story, but the narrative gets bogged down in too many irrelevancies, which is tied to my second problem with it. Namely, one of the two principal females in the present day part of the story is more than a bit wacky, with a strange idea of what constitutes love. Or, at least, reciprocal and healthy love. Also, the parts of the book in which she's telling her backstory are surely the biggest culprits on the bloated and irrelevancies fronts. When almost anyone else on the planet would say something like "I started the day with breakfast," she's far more likely to say something like "The sound of the alarm clock awakened me from a deep sleep and reacquainted me with a dark and quiet city that wasn't yet ready for the role that I had to play in it on that day. My breakfast of two lightly poached eggs, dusted with paprika, seemed to join forces with the overcooked bacon to taunt me from the plate. I drew a sketch of it, hoping for the right shades and textures. And then I looked at my boobs in the mirror." Okay, maybe not that bad, but that's the gist of it. Unfortunately, her role is substantial here, as is her own backstory narrative, and it's all like this. Still, there are some interesting art elements to things, especially the art of the Impressionist period. And the other characters are interesting and nowhere near as flaky, including the artist of the title piece. As a 300-page book with the flake's narrative ratcheted way back, this could have been a five-star read for me, as I really, really liked most of the subject matter. Unfortunately, that sort of editing didn't happen here, leading to flake overkill.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. I like Kostova's academic/research orientated stories.
      I thought Marlow's wife plotline was quite obvious but also worked reasonably well.
      This book evoked the era of Impressionism and it's definitely made me want to go to more art galleries!
      I like the underlying theme of ageing and change, obsession and dedication.
      I wasn't entirely convinced by Robert's sudden recovery but all in all I enjoyed the story.
    • 1/5
      Slo-o-o-ow. . .
    • 5/5
      Andrew Marlow, a psychiatrist and amateur painter, is asked to take on as a patient Robert Oliver, a fairly renowned painter, who has been sectioned after trying to attack a painting in a gallery. Marlow is fascinated with the question of why Oliver would try to destroy a work of art and goes far beyond his professional duty (and ethics) to interview Oliver's ex-wife and ex-lover and various other people to try to get to the bottom of things. (Oliver has spoken only on the first day of his 12 month in-patient stay, to give Marlow permission to do this, but does not speak again). It emerges that Oliver has been painting over and over portraits of a lesser-known Impressionist painter called Beatrice de Clerval, and the modern day story is interspersed with letters written by Beatrice to her husband's uncle and later to scenes that Marlow presumably imagines from her life.I found this story engrossing, especially (surprisingly to me) the 19th century parts. I grew to like Marlow and Mary and found the solution to the mystery at the end very satisfactory. However, there were sections in the first half of the book when I wished Kate or Mary had summarized a bit more - Kate's section of narrative in particular was quite repetitive. I also found the question of Oliver's mental health a bit opaque - Marlow telling him that he understands why he did what he did seems to be enough to magically restore him to sound enough mental health to be released...? I never really felt we got to the bottom of Oliver - was he selfish or did he really love his children? One minute he is an open book, the next he is lying to Mary or keeping a PO Box unbeknownst to his wife. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      There are elements of this book that I loved, but as a whole the book was not a favourite. Kostova's depth of focus on art has sparked a fascination in me. I see and feel art in a different way than I did before reading The Swan Thieves. Some of the characters were nicely fleshed out, if a bit predictable. Like The Historian, the story is told primarily through narratives and letters, the details of which were often unrealistically candid. The plot-line was quite contorted and came to an abrupt- somewhat unbelievable conclusion. Therefore, I rated this book a 3/5.
    • 2/5
      The only way to get through this book is to really care about Robert Oliver, to care why he obsessively paints a seemingly imagined woman, and to care about how Andrew Marlow will "cure" Robert. Unfortunately, I didn't really care about Robert Oliver (for some reason everyone refers to this guy by his full name, even his ex-girlfriend; it's annoying). The guy is not very likeable even if you can excuse his bad behaviour with a mental illness diagnosis. He's very ego-centric. Marlow becomes obsessed with his patient, though, and the "imaginary woman" in the painting (almost to the point of taking on Robert's obsession with her for himself) and flies around the world looking for answers. Oh, and of course Marlow solves his own life problems (including falling in love with a woman and marrying her -- hence entry to the chicklit shelf, because the romance is peripheral to the plot and seems to just fill people's need for a romantic story).

      A long meandering book that quickly comes to an end once the mystery has been solved, without really exploring the conclusion/reasons with the same depth that accompanied the rest of the story.
      Read this book if you must, but I'd forgo the audio version so that you can speed read the irrelevant parts (who cares that Mary buried her father's underwear in the garden? does not contribute to character development in any way!) and reread the parts where important information is quickly dropped in. But unless you love art and painting, you can skip this one.
    • 4/5
      I alternately loved and got impatient with The Swan Thieves. Mostly, I loved it. Mostly I wanted someone around to talk with about it, to ask "did you notice the two mentions of the hat? Was it deliberate" or "I don't know, do you think that ending is too pat?" I love the dense prose, the silky imagery, the seduction of rhythm and sensuous detail. I quibble at the construction: do people talk like this, without taking a breath for a whole chapter? I quibble, as I did with Kostova's The Historian, with the role of the happy (or unhappy) coincidence.
      I love the novels, the great novels of the 19th century and early 20th century. Kostova, to my mind, is writing those now, but with quirks, just as her silent painter paints painting that are of the Impressionist era..but with twists. And the delicate theme of age and love, of aging and love...Well done, poignant, heartbreaking. It's a sentimental book, at heart, trying not to be.
      I will certainly look for further books from this author.
    • 3/5
      I am unsure how I feel about this book. I listened to it on CD, and at times felt myself almost falling asleep at the wheel. I loved they mystery aspect, was lost when they talked about painters, and cared about most of the characters. I think it was just slow. The sections with the women were very long but mostly interesting. A little predictable, but highly imaginative.
    • 1/5
      I had to much expectation for this book and was just highly disappointed. I also think I gave her to much credit for her last and more well known novel The Historian. Her writing style is very much the same in this newer novel. Although personally I believe the author could have cut this book in half and it have been much more enjoyable. She spends too much time describing inconsequential scenery that have no benefit to the story line. The reader's attention wanders, gets distracted or uninterested in her writing multiple times per page while reading. This is not well thought out writing. I remember pushing myself through the first one even though I remember thoroughly enjoying it at the time and also greatly loving the characters. In her newer novel I actually ended up hating her main character for his sexual infatuation with all the women he meets. For the Historian, I think I mainly enjoyed it for its character's extensive travel as the story progressed. Which in this new novel is over looked. I believe this book had a lot of potential if she had added a bit of the paranormal like she did in her first novel, I kept waiting and wishing for a twist to appear, for the veil to be unveiled. But like her first book after 800 pages of diligent and dedicated reading you are disappointed with a mediocrely pieced together 5 paged conclusion. Read the Historian if you must. This novel however is only slightly above terrible due to its correspondence between to lovers which are the only two characters in this novel that are able to grow slightly attached to and not completely disdain. But don't go into this novel with to much expectation, better yet none at all otherwise you will only find yourself aggravated and highly disappointed as well
    • 1/5
      I had high hopes (and expectations) for this novel. I really enjoyed The Historian, so I thought I couldn't go wrong with Kostova's second book. Dull and meandering. It sort of plods along, like a stream of consciousness, ambling from one thought to another. The premise seemed interesting -- artist tries to destroy a work of art at the National Gallery in DC -- turning out to be a mentally unstable man with no desire for help. Andrew Marlowe, the psychiatrist, tries to help the artist (Robert Oliver) throug his suffereing only to spend time with a patient who won't talk. I could not get into the book and stopped reading after 10 chapters. Too many other good books out there to waste time on this.
    • 4/5
      I had read Kostova's book, The Historian, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so when I saw this on audio at the library, I thought I'd give it a shot. I enjoyed the audio version, and found the story slowly drawing me in. As the story alternated between events that occurred in 19th century France and modern day America, I slowly figured out how the two stories tied in with one another. I think this mystery was the most intriguing part of the story. The story is about a psychologist who is trying to help an artist who was arrested for attacking a painting at a museum. The artist, Robert Oliver, will not talk to the psychologist, Andrew Marlowe, so in order to help him, Marlowe has to do quite a bit of investigating. During his travels and investigation he meets Oliver's ex-wife and his former girlfriend. His relationships with each of them to me was somewhat questionable. Also, I guess I was a little disappointed in the ending. Marlowe found the answers he was looking for, but how does that automatically "cure" Oliver?
    • 4/5
      Kostova's sophomore effort is enough to show that The Historian was not a fluke - she really has talent. Her greatest strength: she takes the language seriously. There are few writers of note anymore who seem to care about how their work is expressed - most just tell their story, language be damned. Writers such as Kostova and Dan Simmons make the extra effort to make the words they use as much a part of the story as any other writing element - they care about how they say things, and it shows in a deeper, richer story than might otherwise be the case.Where The Historian takes place as a continuous story told over the space of several centuries, The Swan Thieves is divided between two time periods, and involves two distinct, but related stories: one involving a young woman painting during the Impressionist period, late 19th Century France; the other involving a contemporary artist who attempts to destroy a painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and winds up in the care of a psychiatrist (who dabbles in art).The emphasis is on the contemporary story line, as the psychiatrist attempts to understand (a) why a distinguished painter would try to destroy a magnificent 19th Century painting, and (b) why the painter is obsessed with painting a particular woman (which obsession costs him his marriage, a potential relationship, and his sanity). Interspersed throughout the story are brief flashbacks (some narrative, others in the form of letters written by the 19th Century painter) that gradually begin to fill in the blanks (for the reader). You will find yourself flipping back to earlier parts of the book to check the importance of some newly divulged piece of historic context.The conclusion is not, by any means, predictable, as much as Kostova leads the reader to apprehend where the story is going. Some very interesting twists along the way (including one significant twist that is never really even alluded to in the the story) keep the technique of leading the reader to apprehend where the story is going from making the story line completely predictable. Most effective. Very clever.Any faults here have to do with her development of the psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe. While Kostova clearly has done her research in art and art history, she seems to have somewhat neglected the psychological/psychiatric focus of Marlowe's character, with the result being that one cannot take him very seriously as a psychiatrist. She does credit a pair of psychiatrists for their help, but they couldn't have been of much help. Marlowe's character is certainly unethical (from a professional perspective), and borders on unprincipled. I have a feeling that Elizabeth Kostova is going to be like another contemporary author (Jeffrey Eugenides), in that there will be quite a bit of time between novels. If that time is spent on research, character development, plot development and effective writing, fewer books will mean better books. I can live with that.
    • 3/5
      I loved the Historian, perhaps this was destined to disappoint a bit in comparison? There's a lot to like about it but ultimately the plot was not well paced and the characters I found a little unconvincing.
    • 4/5
      I would certainly recommend The Swan Thieves. Like The Historian, it is an involved, richly detailed story. Kostova has a knack for making fictional characters, particularly fictional historical characters, seem so believable as to fool me. I have to admit to Googling Thomas Gilbert so I could take a gander at the controversial Leda and the Swan painting, only to find that he is an artist the author invented! That's a bit embarrassing and shows the shallowness of my knowledge of art, but it also illustrates how convincing Kostova can be.

      I very much enjoyed the parallel stories, and the parallels between the stories, of the 19th and 20th-21st century characters. I cannot explain my main criticism of the novel without giving spoilers. Suffice it to say, the ending was a bit abrupt and unsatisfactory to me, after the wonderful detail and complexity of the story up to that point. Nevertheless, this was an entertaining read and I will continue to watch for more from this author!
    • 5/5
      This book was spectacular. It is one of those rare books that comes along, only so often, that stays with you and becomes a favourite. Initially, it took me a little while to get into it, but I am so glad I persisted. Told in multiple perspectives and across different time frames kept my interest alive, and the paintings done by Robert Oliver were described to the point where I was hoping they actually existed. It is written extremely well, and the author knows precisely how human thought processes work, along with the intricacies of human relationships - whether they be forbiddan, unexpected or fractured. It reminded me of A.S Byatt's Possession and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. I am definitely buying it when I get the chance!
    • 3/5
      Disappointing, frankly. I didn't feel that the storyline was strong enough to carry over 600 words. I was hoping for a more dramatic ending.
    • 3/5
      I admit my impressions of this book are probably colored by my extreme love of her first book, so I was disappointed in the Swan Thieves. While the characters were well developed they were selfish and difficult to establish an empathic bond with, and I found the mystery itself to be too transparent and contrived. If you hadn't figured out the answers to the puzzle half way through the book or sooner you just weren't paying attention. On the positive side, though, Kostova knows how to construct beautiful prose.
    • 2/5
      After The Historian, I held such promise for this book, but I was disappointed. I have a background in art history, so it should have been just my kind of book. I found it too long, slow and very laboured without ever really going anywhere. I had neither empathy with or sympathy for Robert Oliver, who was a self-centred bully. I never understood his obsession either - it was neither fully explained nor tied in to the past narrative in any satisfactory way. The ending just didn't hold together - it started well but fizzled out.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book, she is such a great writer. It has the mystery and suspense of the Historian, but the imagery and language are just as beautiful as the paintings described!
    • 4/5
      Being an art buff, I loved how this story was put together. I thought it was well put together and better than her book The Historian, which I enjoyed
    • 3/5
      the modern story was poorly done, the parallel story much better, it started out with so much promise then fizzled
    • 3/5
      It's hard to imagine readers who are not interested in painting enjoying this book. Kostova describes artwork vividly, and is especially good at conveying the mood paintings evoke in viewers. I enjoy such rich descriptive detail about the art, but it can be verbose and tiresome in the rest of the book. All three of her main narrators seem to have the same remarkable gift for recalling detail and expressing it floridly. These three characters are clearly Kostova instead of developed, believable individuals. It's like seeing a ventriloquist's lips moving. Even so, the story is compelling, and the ending is satisfying. The main mystery twists and reforms itself rapidly in the last few chapters before neatly tying the story lines together. I enjoyed reading it, but am not likely to pick it back up for a second go-round.
    • 5/5
      What a beautiful story, this book is well written and really captures the essence of the characters, bringing them to life. You can feel Robert's pain and in turn the pain he causes his wife, destroying his marriage. The pain he causes his student who falls for him, and to whom Robert turns when his wife throws him out. It is a story of obsession. Robert's obsession with the artist Beatrice de Clerval and her love for her husband's uncle Olivier Vignot. Robert's desire to know why she stopped painting when she was so talented. In turn, the Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe follows his obsession in getting to understand his patient. Why Robert attempted to destroy a painting and why he is so tortured by his obsession.I love stories about art and artists, perhaps it is because they are often complex personalities. So gifted and yet so tortured. Although Patrick Gales' Notes from an Exhibition is a completely different book, one can draw similarities through art and depression. Was Robert a manic depression sufferer like the woman in Gale's book? He did take lithium, although he did not commit suicide. Why should the talented be tormented so? It often seems to be the price they pay. Excellent and well recommended.
    • 3/5
      This book was burdened by way to many subplots which dragged the story out.. The overall plot is well described in those who reviewed this before me.
    • 2/5
      I'm very disappointed by this book! It hasn't been well edited, there are too many uninteressting details, it's really overlong. What with French Impressionism and psychiatry, I was looking forward to something else. And the total lack of humour makes it so lackluster.