Product Description

The lives of four amazingly different individuals become intertwined with that of Mary Swann, a rural Canadian poet of delicate verse whose genuine talent is only discovered after she is brutally murdered.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #267439 in Books
• Published on: 1990-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Viking has wisely decided not to publish this fascinating novel as a mystery, as it was designated in Canada, where it earned excellent reviews. While two (rather bland) mysteries animate the plot, the book's considerable impact is as a combination of psychological novel and satirical comedy of manners that wittily dissects the pretensions of academia. The titular Mary Swann was murdered on the very day she had shown her poems to a publisher who recognized her talent. Fifteen years after her death, a symposium is to take place; the story focuses on four people who will attend: a ferociously engagee feminist scholar who "rediscovered" Swann's poetry, a misanthropic biographer committed to writing about Swann, a silly spinster librarian in the tiny town near Swann's home and the gruff but kindly publisher who issued her works in a limited edition. Each commands a section of the narrative and, in cool, witty prose, Shields artfully conveys their personalities, as well as the distortions each has made, for their own reasons, in Swann's life and work. (Meanwhile, however, a thief is systematically stealing every extant copy of her book.) In the end, Swann's life remains unknowable, though by now completely altered by her devotees' speculation and obfuscation. Adroitly illuminating the chasm between appearance and reality, this intelligent, provocative novel is sure to pique readers' interest in Shields's earlier work, Various Miracles , just reissued by Penguin.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Mary Swann, a fictitious poet, was brutally murdered by her husband; her poems were published posthumously. Some years later, as this novel opens, a group of scholars meets for a Swann Symposium. We follow four of the participants as they prepare for the meeting: Sarah Maloney, brilliant young feminist scholar; Morton Jimroy, literary biographer; Rose Hindmarch, librarian; and Frederic Cruzzi, small-town journalist and publisher. Each distorts a different aspect of the life and work of Mary Swann. This novel delightfully satirizes academia and the literary world, wryly exploring the notion of textual criticism. Shields is well known in Canada; Swann should make her better known in her native United States.
- Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Magic flows from her pen ...
It comes as quite a shock at the beginning of the fifth chapter of "Swann" to be reminded that Sarah Maloney, Morton Jimroy, Rose Hindmarch and Frederick Cuzzi area all fictional characters. By that time, having read each of their brushes with Mary Swann (who is also fictitious) and her poetry, you feel that you'd recognize them in a crowd.

In this early novel, Carol Shields shows the talent developed in later works, especially her penchant for using disparate literary styles to tell the story. Her characters are so beautifully formed; they leap from the page and demand you get to know them. Locations are so vividly described, you feel you could immediately find them, should you be transported to Chicago, Palo Alto, Nardeau or Kingston.

In 1965, within hours of submitting her body of work, written on scraps of paper and stored in a paper bag, to literary publisher and newspaper owner, Frederick Cruzzi, Mary Swann, a "primitive" poet from rural Canada, was hacked to pieces by her violent brute of a husband. The 125 poems were subsequently published in a small, stapled pamphlet with a limited run of 250 copies, most of which Cruzzi and his wife ended up giving away.

Many years after publication, Sarah Maloney, a feminist scholar of some note, found a copy in the limited selection or reading material in a remote cottage on a lake in Wisconsin, where she'd gone to have a good long, hard think about her life. Intrigued, she set out to find out more about Swann and her poetry, and soon was in correspondence with a select little group of assorted fans and scholars, including pretentious Morton Jimroy, self-appointed biographer, spinsterly Rose Hindmarch, librarian who lent books to Swann, worldwise Frederick Cuzzi, publisher to whom Swann entrusted her work.

The present time of the book is 1987, and the first ever Swann Symposium is about to take place. Strange things start happening with Swann memorabilia - Sarah's copy of "Swann's Songs" can't be found; Cruzzi's house is burgled and the only things missing are the four copies of the pamphlet he'd retained; one of the two known photographs of Mary Swann goes missing from the Nardeau library.

In this fascinating tale, it's intriguing how the threads of Mary Swann's life slowly pull together, even as she seems to be disappearing forever and how the works of an extremely little known poet, dead for more than 20 years, cause such bitter rivalries, jealousies and criminal behaviour. But even as she becomes more ephemeral, her effect on her admirers becomes more profound.

The first four chapters, almost novellas, of this book titled "Mary Swan" in the British edition I found in my library, each tell of a central character's encounter with Swann and/or her work. The Swan Symposium, the final chapter, is written as a play, which I thought at first was a little precious. Then I realised that since it all took place in a hotel and was mostly dialogue anyway, what better way of expressing it. Readers are spared all the words normally used to pad dialogue out into sentences. "Bit part" players are given beautifully descriptive names like Butter Mouth, Merry Eyes, Silver Cufflinks, Woman with Turban, Woman in Pale Suede Boots, Wistful Demeanour and Crinkled Forehead - that's all you need to picture them.

"Swann" has been described as a "literary mystery" but it's not a traditional mystery with a detective following up clues - in fact, I think to categorise it as a mystery is to sell this rich and intriguing work short. If you want to categorise it at all, it's a beautifully subtle satire aimed at the pretentiousness found in the literary world. If any of Ms Shields' novels were worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, this is the one.

I've read several of Carol Shields works and, with the exception of "Stone Diaries", each has usurped the last as my favourite. This is a little worrying, since I've been working my way backwards through the list. I guess I'll have to stop now.

The Soul of Poetess
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...

Oh god, this novel is stupendously finest kind
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.