The Swan Thieves by Elisabeth Kostova
As promised, I am writing about this book written by Elisabeth
Kostova who, you may remember from my prior post wrote The Historian. The Historian was a haunting and sometimes
downright sinister tale of Dracula.
While reading it I often looked over my shoulder to see if I was being
followed. No worries about that when you
read this book which deals with an artist who is mentally ill.
For some reason which I cannot seem to figure out at the
moment I seem to be gravitating towards books with an artist as a main
character. The two others were Coming Up for Air and Trick of the Light. Perhaps this is no coincidence. Perhaps this is my subconscious telling me to
go buy canvas and paint and create something.
Remember there are no coincidences. Anyway back to the book. As I mentioned the story revolves around a
brilliant artist, Robert, who turns out to be mentally ill.
The author uses this character to introduce and develop all
the other characters in the book. In
fact, she also uses them to give insight into the inner workings of Robert’s
mind. So his story actually evolves
through the eyes of his ex-wife, his mistress and his psychiatrist and in doing
so their stories emerge as well.
The best thing about this book is how well this author writes. You all now I read a lot. For that matter I read a lot of fiction and I
find it very refreshing to read an author is not necessarily writing “bestseller
fiction for the masses”. Don’t get me
wrong, I love those books which is evident by my choice of books. In fact one of the things on my bucket list
is to write one of those books when I grow up, but nothing is more exciting
than discovering a book that uses the English language well.
This is not the type of book you can breeze through rather it
is one that you take your time, savor the writing and enjoy the story. It is like a good bottle of wine that gets
better after the first sip.
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