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The Swan Thieves: A Novel |  | Author: Elizabeth Kostova
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $26.99
Buy Used: $4.06
as of 7/31/2010 12:41 CDT details
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New (63) Used (74) Collectible (20) from $4.06
Seller: piedmont_books
Rating:  123 reviews
Sales Rank: 5758
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 576
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.8
ISBN: 0316065781
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780316065788
ASIN: 0316065781
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This is the first edition, first printing. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 123
 A Task difficult to complete July 27, 2010
Yusuf Wijaya (Jakarta, Jakarta Raya, ID)
It is plotless and boring.. and, reading this book is more like a chore. I am up to page 150 and I don't think I want to continue.
I can't believe this book is written by the same person who wrote the Historian. A total disappointment.
 Plot drags for 600 pages, then crazy ending. July 24, 2010
Mamafifi (Chesterton, IN United States)
So I spend 600 pages, reading pointless descriptions of everything imaginable, trains, flowers, etc., and then at the end you give me a rush job? I can't believe you take 600 pages to develop how insane this guy is and then he is suddenly cured at the end for no reason other than the psychiatrist's knowledge of why he did what he did? Come on! Everything happens in the last 25 pages, and it's frankly unbelievable because of how much the author set us up! I'm so disappointed, and furious at being led down this path! What a waste of many hours! The only redeeming quality is that Kostova is a good writer, which is also her downfall. We are lured in! But it is the big picture plot isuses that have real problems here. I get so tired of all of the pointless storytelling, when there is little story. It could have been told in half the pages, and with a much better developed ending. If you're going to lure me through 600 pages, at least throw me a bone every once in a while, instead of a bag of bones at the end that leave me too full to be satisfied.
Horrible Book July 23, 2010
Mary Jackson (Dallas, TX)
I was talked into reading this book by someone at work; I hated The Historian, but tried to give this book a chance. Unfortunately, it's worse than the previous book. Others have adequately described extremely bad plot and dull, interchangeable characters. I totally agree, and I have a problem with an author so hyped who simply doesn't know grammar. Ms. Kostova, the past tense of slit is not slitted; it is slit. Slit is an irregular verb. At this point, I stopped reading the book. Just because someone has a degree does not make a good author; I suggest that Ms. Kostova, if she really wants to be a good author, go back and take more classes--including one in sentence structure and grammar.
This book should never have been published.
 Not so bad... July 18, 2010
Tina Radi (Chicago)
Kostova's first novel, The Historian, gripped me from the beginning. If you have not picked it up yet, I beg you to do so. It is a novel beautifully crafted and a fully-researched modern masterpiece. i was thrilled to hear about the release of her second novel. When I finally got a round to it, I was expected the same caliber of novel.
Not quite.
I will admit, it is a wonderful story, full of Impressionism, sweetness and beautiful writing. But it left me thinking: "This is Elizabeth Kostova?" It has the same sweet romance and fanciful, highly-detailed writing as Historian, but not the same soul. The Historian was exceptional, this was a bit ordinary.
Not to say that if had been written by any other author, without the high expectations in their wake, I would have fully enjoyed this novel.
My only other comment was that the end was a bit hasty. we begin the book with a bit too detailed narrative from a woman that does not have much to do with the end result of the story, ultimately, but the conclusion of the big mystery is not detailed enough. It seemed as if she ran out of time.
Literary Torture July 15, 2010
Maxine Sellers
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
After thoroughly enjoying "The Historian," I anticipated that this book would be interesting to read. Big mistake.
As some other reviewers pointed out, the reader is easily misled about the narrator's gender; in fact, all characters share the same "voice" throughout this long-winded, poorly written compilation of words: an odd, pretentiously stilted language used as all-purpose vehicle to convey mundane thoughts and non-events the reader couldn't care less about.
The subject of the narrator's pointless quest is the (mercifully silent) artist who comes under the former's psychiatric observation and care after attempting to slash a painting in the National Gallery. The repeated and limiting depictions of the artist's harsh features, brusque movements, brooding mood swings and stares brings to mind a spastic bird of prey too conveniently locked up in a cage. As for the artist's perennial subject and muse, the reader will immediately guess that she 1.) is dead; 2.) is the painter who wrote those boring letters are thrown in between chapters of this novel, perhaps to vainly attempt to keep the reader's interest?
The other characters on this long-winded, doorstop-heavy novel are all as equally unlikable, contrite and devoid of life as the author's writing style.
The narrator, -who, depending on the chapter, may or may not be married- does not seem to have any other purpose than to channel the story.
The female letter writer/painter, writes tepid love letters written in, -as the French would say-, "un style ampoulé"; with the assertion that she needed a chaperone to accompany her everywhere at all times, she seems hardly credible as a female well-to-do painter living near Paris in 19th century France.
The artist's mousy one-dimensional ex-wife with her whiny personality and apparent lackluster bourgeois home decorating skills would make any rational spouse, let alone an artist, to feel stifled and run away without looking back.
The uninteresting ex-lover artist, -with hair either blond, red, or was that "shiny-," does not strike the reader as much different from the ex-wife.
I will not bore others with a review any further: this book is a drag.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 123
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