I found out two weeks ago that you can take out books from your libraries now (if they have the capabilities) for your Kindles. So immediately went online and searched through the available books (there aren’t as many as I had hoped and so many had long waiting lists), but I found The Swan Thieves available. I really wanted anything available just to see how the whole “check-out” process worked.
I was excited to see The Swan Thieves
The Swan Thieves tells the story of a psychiatrist, his crazy artist patient and the women in the artist’s life that help the psychiatrist figure out why the artist attacked a work of art in a museum and then subsequently won’t speak. There, I think I gave a one-line summary without spoiling anything.
At first, I really enjoyed the book (maybe the first 30 – 40%) as the mystery does hook you but soon you figure out the few possibilities that could be the solution and then it just feels like the author is going through some mental masturbation as she writes. Seriously? How many times must she describe the artist’s “thick curly hair” or his large hands (wink, wink) before we get the idea he’s someone women would want to screw (well, not this one, personally I thought he was a bit of a self-centered ass). And maybe that’s one of the problems is that the more I learned about the artist, the more I could care less whether or not the psychiatrist cured him. I had the same feeling about the psychiatrist – things with him felt improbable and the more I learned about him, the less I cared there too. Now that I’m writing this, I actually think perhaps the author just shouldn’t be focusing on men as her protagonists because I’m not sure she can develop them fully (avoiding cliche and stereotypes), yet I did like some of the women characters.
Oh well. I’ve already finished my next book and that definitely grabbed and held me. I’ll write about that shortly.