This book had a nice air of mystery and I enjoyed the dual story lines. It made me want to wander in art galleries and linger over coffee and croissants. ( )

The reviews that write this up as over fraught are not wrong, in my opinion it just lends tone to the personalities of the characters who are none of them mentally well and all having their own crisis. My main criticism is the ending felt rushed and less rich then the rest of the story. ( )

This novel is long. Too long. So much tension and detail which should be riveting and was early in the novel, was boring by half way through. It does pick up again at the end.
What I did enjoy was all the references / history of famous artworks.
The mystery of Robert Oliver obsession with a little known 18th century artist never really gets explained and the ending didn’t satisfy this for me.
There were some good parts ( like Andrew Morrow the psychiatrist)that allowed me to finish this novel. ( )

Artistic genius and insanity often go hand in hand. And in The Swan Thieves, the reader is presented with a character who definitely has this condition. The character Robert Oliver, a gifted artist develops an obsessive and twisted love for a 19th century French artist and while I enjoyed the artistic aspects of this novel I was completely unsympathetic to any of the characters that had the misfortune to fall under the sway of Oliver. Be they his wife, his mistress, his psychiatrist; I found them all to be downright silly to allow themselves to be caught up, mired in, and dragged down by Oliver's silly obsessions. ( )

Read for the trip not for the coherence of the plot. If you like Art History this is the novel for you. ( )