Swann

I just finished this novel and still am reeling six ways from Sunday because it's just too damn fine. Brilliant, funny, wise, mordant, stupendous, gorgeous novel about creativity and how it's perceived. A particularly fine academic satire but very much more. If you haven't read this yet, get thee hence asap. What great and useful pleasure awaits.

It is really difficult to determine genre of this undoubtedly excellent novel. A literary mystery? Yes, but only in its framework... A brilliant satire that derides the intellectual high society? Yes, especially in the last part of the book with its impressing gallery of ironically depicted persons without names but with picturesque sobriquets. Even at least three of four main characters of the novel are rather humorously delineated: a feminist who is fond of theoretically contemptible men; a biographer and misanthrope, an impotent with disorderly sexual fantasies; an old maiden with pretensions of personal significance... An experiment with literary form? Yes, it really transforms through the whole book, reaching its culmination in the end, crossing the border between novel and screenscript...But I think that the author's conception is more profound: the novel is a serious attempt of philosophical comprehension of human personality. Mary Swann, a rural Canadian poet, was murdered by her brutal husband only hours after submitting her poems to local newspaper editor and publisher Frederic Cruzzi. She became famous posthumously, and now four different people - a scholar Sarah Maloney, a writer Morton Jimroy, a librarian Rose Hindmarch and Frederic Cruzzi are trying to understand Mary Swann and her poems. With their semi-empty souls and aspirations for mandane success and promotion, in their endeavors to grasp the meaning of her poems, they fail. They start reconstruction not of the real Mary Swann but her artificial image apropos their intensions. So genuine understanding is impossible: Swann's life was devoid of external events, nobody knew her thoughts and yearnings. But a miracle happens - unsolved spirit of poetess via her naive poems commences to alter her readers...

I read THE STONE DIARIES earlier this year, and thought it was a thought-provoking & interesting book. But when I read this one...Stone what? Carol Shields is a master of wit & irony, displayed in her characters and her relentless mocking of the intellectual establishment. Being something of a poet myself I could almost put my self in poor Mary Swann's shoes... A combination satire, artistic declaration and Miss Marple mystery, SWANN is amazing. Read this before any other Shields book...trust me.

Carol Shields' "Swann" is quite the most entertaining novel I have read all year. It is, in short, a gem, a rare find that defies easy categorisation. Shields combines elements of several literary genres to create a landmark that is simply resplendent in all its glory. Mary Swann, an obscure rural poet who was brutally murdered by her husband in 1965, suddenly emerges as the latest discovery some decades later and becomes a fixation with the publishing and scholarly community in Canada. Four individuals, a scholar (Sarah Maloney), a biographer (Morton Jimroy), a publisher (Frederic Cruzzi) and a librarian (Rose Hindmarch), working separately on Swann's legacy, are brought together by their common obsession. Examining the part each of them plays in unrevelling the Swann mystery, Shields explores the nature of art and the recurring theme of "appearance and reality" to great effect. The scholastic community look in vain for "literary influences" in Swann's sparse but granite hard jewels. Is it so inconceivable that this cowering nothing of a woman is capable of creating art "without influences" ? The value ascribed to manuscripts by scholars and publishers is also questioned. Are they not merely the physical manifestation of the final product and not the genius of creation which is of the moment and incapable of being captured and saved for scrutiny and analysis. Shields also displays her brilliant sense of irony in her characterisation. Sarah, for all her feminist ideals, marries not her lover (Brownie) but the well heeled Stephen and finds herself on the way to becoming a Mum. Who would have thought that the pompous and superior Morton, celebrated biographer of Ezra Pound, is sexually impotent, unable to relate to women in the flesh but imagines himself to be in love with Sarah ? The novel also crackles throughout with an almost cruel sense of humour, particularly in the dialogue sequence between Morton and Rose which is so funny it borders on the ridiculous. All the threads are neatly drawn together in the final segment where Shields delivers her coup-de-grace in a climax resembling a Miss Marple type thriller. With customary wit and charm, Shields has produced a minor masterpiece in "Swann". It is so good you would want to revisit it again and again. Go read it. I can't recommend it more highly.

I read this book last year, after borrowing it from a friend. The day after I finished it, I went and bought a copy for myself, one for my mother, and one for my sister; everyone should read it! I was moved to tears in some parts, in others, I had to stop reading, I was so afraid for the characters. Mary Swann's poetry is touching and beautiful, and her "disappearance" that forms the focus of the story is heartbreakingly tragic. The style and form are typical Sheilds, adding interest and humor. Such a great book.