Swann

(Please join the T(ea) is for Tuesday party hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth).

Swann is a 1987 mystery novel by Carol Shields. I've read several of her books and always enjoy them. I read The Stone Diaries before I started blogging, because it won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. More recently I've read Unless and Larry's Party. I'll continue picking up her books as I come across them. I'm never disappointed by her.

You can read an excerpt from Swann at the author's website.

from the back of the book:

To her neighbors, Mary Swann was a simple, hardworking farm wife; her delicate poems are discovered only after she is brutally murdered. The strange, evocative verses attract the attention of an earnestly self-absorbed feminist scholar, a pompous literary biographer, a virginal small-town librarian, and a curmudgeonly retired newspaper editor. But as interest increases, all traces of Swann's existence -her notebook, the first draft of her work, even her photograph- mysteriously vanish.

In solving the puzzle of Swann's disappearing legacy, Carol Shields explores the larger mysteries of the nature of art, as well as the powerful forces that motivate us all.

Tea shows up a few times in this book. For one woman it's a comfort measure:

Oh, she loves her Friday nights. During the week she's too tired to read, and it's all she can do to keep her attention on the television. But Friday nights: a pot of tea by her bedside, the satin binding of the blanket at her chin, the clean cotton-and-Fortrel-blend sheets moving across her legs, her book propped up in front of her.
...
Rose's bedside clock says 2:00 A.M. The hour and the grey chill of the room augment the airlessness that enters her throat. Just one more chapter, she promises herself, but she can't stop. Through a crack in her curtains she can see the moon, shaved down to a chip. The tea in her cup has been cold for hours, but she sips a little anyway...

In other places it's used as a distraction, as in "May I get you some tea?" as a way to change an uncomfortable subject. It's interesting to think about how tea and coffee rituals can provide solitary comfort and how they can serve as a social tool. It doesn't just taste good; it's useful! Now I feel all justified and righteous!

The book provides an almost snarky look at academe. The researchers know what they want to find and find it, ignoring all evidence that doesn't support their view. The people being interviewed who knew the poet being researched either provide deliberately one-sided views of the subject or they make up stuff trying to please the researchers.

I loved this book. You can just imagine this actually happening. Biographies just aren't as trustworthy if you question the author's agenda. And posthumous works? Well, I've always been a bit suspicious of works published posthumously.

favorite quotes:

Habit is the flywheel of society, conserving and preserving and dishing up tidy, edible slices of the cosmos. And there's much to be said for a steady diet. Those newspaper advice-givers who urge you to put a little vinegar in your life are toying, believe me, with your sanity.

.....

Guilt has the power to extract merciless sacrifices.

.....

Clever men create themselves, but clever women, it seems to me, are created by their mothers. Women can never quite escape their mothers' cosmic pull, not their lip-biting expectations or their faulty love. We want to please our mothers, emulate them, disgrace them, oblige them, outrage them, and bury ourselves in the mysteries and consolations of their presence.

.....

...women carry with them the full freight of their mothers' words. It's the one part of us that can never be erased or revised.

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...a life lived, as the saying goes, in the avoidance of biography.

.....

...perhaps men have a tendency to overlook what is perfectly obvious to women.

.....

The hold most married people have on each other tends to dwindle fairly quickly, but occasionally accident and temperament, so strangely mingled, keep it buoyant.

Publishers Weekly opens its review with this:

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.

Kirkus Reviews says, "... this novel is the triumphant introduction of a mature artist to American readers."