The Swan Thieves

 

I got the call about Robert Oliver in April 1999, less than a week after he'd pulled a knife in the nineteenth-century collection at the National Gallery. It was a Tuesday, one of those terrible mornings that sometimes come to the Washington area when spring has already been flowery and even hot--ruinous hail and heavy skies, with rumbles of thunder in the suddenly cold air. It was also, by coincidence, exactly a week after the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO; I was thinking obsessively about that event, as I imagined every psychiatrist in the country must have been...

The Swan Thieves

Elizabeth Kostova

 

This is the opening paragraph, although I wish I'd marked more of the outstanding excerpts in this truly beautifully-written novel. Alas (Rarely get a chance to use that wonderfully expressive word.), I was reading a borrowed copy of Elizabeth Kostova's 2010 book. And, had not yet determined to never return the book to its rightful owner. (With permission...)

Anyhow, for me this is one of those books that you never want to end. I cherished the pages and stretched it out--a rarity for this book-a-day gal.

Now, I've begun Kostova's 2005 best seller--The Historian.

 

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