Swann, by Carol Shields, was a difficult novel to start (and not the least of which was my difficulty concentrating on a novel while also taking care of my six month old son!). The novel is about the mysterious Mary Swann, a Manitoba housewife who is murdered before the story even begins. Swann is a poet and her works are "discovered" by a feminist scholar, Sarah Maloney, who is manipulative and ambitious, plus much too in love with herself. The irony of Sarah, of course, is her much-too-much attention to her looks and ultimate marriage to Stephen. The novel is about a symposium devoted to scholarship of this unknown poet. The story is narrated by four different characters who are influenced and affected by Mary Swann and her legacy. The aforementioned Sarah Maloney discovered the poet when visiting a remote cabin and on the run from a lover. The second narrator, Morton Jimroy, is an esteemed literary biographer writing about Swann's life, but reduced to stealing a fountain pen from the poet's daughter when interviewing her for his book. The third narrator is spinster librarian (what a cliche!) Rose Hindmarch who supposedly knew the poet best, but actually knows nothing at all. And, finally, narrator four is Frederic Cruzzi, erstwhile newspaper editor and poetry publisher who meets Mary Swann on the day she is murdered and has a secret of his own about her poems.
At the same time each of these characters are narrating the story of their relationship with Mary Swann, pieces of Swann's life are mysteriously disappearing, as if traces of Mary herself are gone. The novel is ambitious and the last section is a humorous send-up of academic symposia, but the whole of the novel tries to convey the nature of Mary's loss -- her murder as well as the loss of any legacy she left behind. It succeeds at conveying the bumbling nature of the four people who supposedly "knew" her the best and the irony of what they did not know.
