SOURCE: "Carrion Conspiracy," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 20, 1989, p. 2.

In the following review, Hegi discusses the issue of stolen identity in Swann.

What happens when literary criticism takes a writer's work so far from her intent that, finally, it loses its essence? Carol Shields asks disturbing questions about the nature of theft in her novel, Swann. Who is the real thief—the person who steals the last rare copies of a murdered poet's book, the scholars who use her poems to seek recognition for themselves, or her husband who brutally murders her?

Fifteen years after Canadian poet, Mary Swann, is killed without an apparent motive, a symposium is held in Toronto, drawing Swann experts from all over the United States and Canada. Shields focuses on four of the participants—a critic, a biographer, a publisher, and a town clerk.

The feminist critic, Sarah Maloney, considers herself...