This would have been a great story if it had been told entirely in third-person point of view.
No no, there is too little. Let me elaborate.
This is Elizabeth Kostova's second novel after The Historian. Now, The Historian is also written in first-person point of view (hereinafter referred to as "POV" so I don't have to type it out over and over again). For whatever reason, this didn't bother me at all. Either it was better written or my narrative viewpoint taste has changed in the last few years or I perceive POV differently in The Swan Thieves. I dunno.
The novel is primarily told from Dr Andrew Marlow's POV. Dr Marlow is a psychiatrist recounting a patient case - essentially, this novel is an extended patient history. His patient, Robert Oliver, is a gifted painter who nearly slashes a painting at the National Gallery in DC. Robert is brought in for psychiatric evaluation, which is how he ends up in Marlow's care.
Dr Marlow is also a painter, so he does take an artistic interest in the case. He also breaks a lot of professional rules in the pursuit of resolving this case, including traveling all over the place, getting involved with one of Robert's ex-loves, even yelling at Robert at one point, and no one he works with seems to notice this or question it except the doctor himself, and then he only acknowledges it briefly before he plunges ahead anyway. He also goes to the National Gallery to see the painting that Robert nearly destroyed. While there, he glimpses a woman who also seems to be interested in the painting.
Robert is not an interesting patient. The story is about him, but in the sense that the doctor is finding out about him from everyone but Robert himself. Robert says little to nothing until the end of the novel, and even then, it's not much. Instead, he draws and paints the same person over and over again (Marlow provides him with art supplies). We're only reminded of Robert when Marlow goes to check on him periodically and finds that he's still not talking. Instead, he has a packet of old letters, which he leaves out for Marlow to read early on in the novel. The letters are between a painter, Beatrice de Clerval, and her uncle by marriage, Olivier Vignot, who is also a painter. They were written during the Impressionist movement. I think the best adjective for them is "charming." A slight bit of simpering in them, but not too bad. Actually, I think these letters have the most authentic voices in the whole novel. And oddly, Beatrice's and Olivier's scenes are the only ones written in third person. I'm not sure why.
Dr Marlow, renowned for being able "to make a stone talk," contacts Robert's ex-wife since Robert himself won't volunteer any information. The doctor visits the ex-wife, Kate, in North Carolina. Over the course of two days, Kate tells Marlow all about her relationship with Robert. These chapters are told from Kate's POV as though she is talking to the doctor. In other words, still first person POV, but now it's Kate's, not Marlow's. Kate seems a little bitter, and Marlow's musings on her lead the reader to think he's attracted to her. Then he meets Mary, Robert's ex-girlfriend and the mysterious woman who was interested in the painting at the National Gallery. Mary is also a painter. In fact, she started pursuing an art career after taking a painting class with Robert. We get her POV on Robert, and Marlow also writes about being attracted to her.
All this is meant to parallel Olivier's attraction to Beatrice, but the parallel doesn't quite work, mainly because it's too obvious a parallel. Chapters mirror each other, and only change out characters and time period. Something more subtle would have been appreciated.
This novel presents what's called a "slow build." It's not a quick read - facts and details are revealed gradually, and parallels are drawn between the Beatrice's life, Robert's life, and Marlow's life. I don't mind reading novels that do this. In fact, I rather enjoy sinking down into all that story. However, in this novel, it takes so. bloody. long to get through all the people recounting their memories of other people and Marlow figuring out who Robert's painting subject really is and why she's important. Things only start to pick up in the last quarter of the novel. I had to repeatedly fight the urge to skim and/or read ahead.
One thing really threw me. Kate tells Marlow about an incident in which her mother, who had been living with them for awhile, is dying. She calls to Robert, who is elsewhere in the house. When he comes into the room, he stares transfixed at the scene in front of him - the daughter kneeling on the ground cradling her mother and looking up at Robert. A couple of chapters later, Marlow sees one of Robert's paintings that depicts this scene but the subjects are wearing different clothes and are on the street. He states that he can't imagine where Robert got the idea for it. I had to go back and re-read the chapter in which Kate describes the scene with her mother to make sure I hadn't read it wrong. Marlow heard the story and then saw the painting, so of course he knows where Robert got the idea from! Possibly that was an editing blip and the Marlow-seeing-Robert's-painting scene should have come before the interview with Kate. Although, other plot details would have to change to make that work. Later on, the Beatrice's letters reveal a similar scene, which Robert would have read and then seen the image of in the scene with his wife and mother-in-law, which he then painted. Even I got all the connections, and that's saying something.
Overall, it's the awkward first-person POV that bugged me the most in this novel. I think it was the overabundance of detail - settings, people's facial expressions and mannerisms, what they ate, endless descriptions of how they feel and how they suffer all their angst. It's far more detail than makes sense for first-person POV. It's as though the whole thing had originally been written in third-person POV, and then changed to first-person at the last minute before being sent off to the printer. I understand the whole suspend-disbelief-this-is-fiction-after-all argument, but it's hard to do that when the voices don't read naturally and sound forced and almost silly in their descriptions of scenes and conversations.
I don't know what it is about second novels not being as good as the first ones, but I'm down two for two now, which doesn't bode well. I hope my next book review will be more positive.
