# 4 The Swan Theives - Elizabeth Kostova

I read The Historian last year and I loved it. I love a well written book, I love a little surprise, and I just think anything vampire related is a little bit sexy. I found The Swan Thieves in the airport on the way home from another crappy three days in Houston and it made the 2 hour delay almost tolerable, although it probably shouldn't have lasted that long...

TST, succeeds on a lot of levels; however, it is not as good as The Historian . Like her first novel, this one has multiple narratives, descriptions that border on laborious, and a love story (two, actually). There are two narratives at work in this novel, although the second one isn't introduced until almost a hundred pages in, and although it turns out to be compelling, it served as nothing but distraction for this reader for at least a hundred pages if not more.

History is at the center of Kostova's first novel and Art is at the center of this one. All the main characters in the novel are artists, and specifically, painters. The novel focuses on Marlowe, a painter turned Psychiatrist. Marlowe is treating Oliver, a painter who recently attacked a painting, was arrested, forced into care and refuses to speak. Oliver has had two significant women in his life, both painters, with whom Marlowe confers trying to untangle the mystery of Oliver's behavior and refusal to communicate. The second narrative, introduced via letters in Oliver's possession, also involves painters. A young woman painter and her older male mentor, at the turn of the century in France. Their narrative also involves a mystery and it requires solving the 100 year old mystery to unravel Oliver's current day issues.

Kostova spends a significant amount of time waxing poetic in this book and generally she has such astute control of the language I don't mind. However, there are sections that begin to lag, where the lack of action or growth from the characters becomes frustrating no matter how compelling the sentence structure. I imagine lovers of Jane Austen and her ilk will be more patient with Kostova than the general public. It's not always what happens that's important but what doesn't or rather how it doesn't. Kostova seems to have nailed that, at length.