Reviewed by Sophie Groom, Book Review Expert
In The Swan Thieves, author Elizabeth Kostova has woven together a big, satisfying mystery, an examination of how art affects people’s lives and a touching love story into one exquisite package.
Her previous book, The Historian, was critically acclaimed and won her thousands of fans around the world. The Swan Thieves will garner many, many more. Highly recommended.
The plot: One day psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe receives a phone call that will abruptly change the course of his life. A well known American artist, Robert Oliver, has been arrested for attacking a painting in the National Gallery of Art. Oliver refuses to speak, even to defend himself to the police, so Marlowe is called upon to try to reach out to the troubled painter.
When Oliver remains uncommunicative, Marlowe takes it upon himself to investigate and so makes contact with Oliver’s family and friends. Soon, Marlowe finds himself overstepping the professional boundary between psychiatrist and patient, increasingly drawn into the obsessive world of the brilliant, difficult artist and the women in his life and paintings.
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