num_pages: 416
description: Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Award A “funny, poignant, surprising” (Margaret Atwood) literary detective story centering around a murdered poet. Who is Mary Swann?In this novel of a writer’s revenge, an uneducated farmer’s wife delivers a paper bag filled with scraps of her poems to the publisher of a small press. Hours later, she’s dead, murdered by her husband. Fifteen years on, her book of one hundred twenty-five poems—Mary Swann’s sole claim to fame—is discovered by an American academic. And a literary odyssey begins.Four narrators—Sarah Maloney, a feminist writer; Frederic Cruzzi, an editor; Morton Jimroy, a biographer; and Rose Hindmarch, Mary’s only friend—all have a stake in the deceased poet’s work. Their chorus of voicesopens a fascinating window on what constitutes genius. As the four descend into a quagmire of ego, jealousy, and backstabbing, Mary Swann comes back to life—in the minds and hearts of those who love and hate her most. Full of mischief,  Swann  is a novel about life, death, and the ideas that live on after us.
language: English
title: Swann
titlecomplete: Swann
characters: Morton Jimroy, Rose Hindmarch, Frederic Cruzzi, Sarah Maloney
genres: 20th Century, Books About Books, Literary Fiction, Womens, Novels, Fiction, Adult Fiction, Canadian Literature, Canada, Mystery
ratings_count: 2206
awards: awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Arthur Ellis Award
category: Best Novel
publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited