A Wild Swan: And Other Tales, by Michael Cunningham
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A Wild Swan: And Other Tales, by Michael Cunningham
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Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The HoursA poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away―the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder―are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation. Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans. Reimagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, and exquisitely illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, rarely have our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.
A Wild Swan: And Other Tales, by Michael Cunningham - Amazon Sales Rank: #118605 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-10
- Released on: 2015-11-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.49" h x .70" w x 6.38" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 144 pages
A Wild Swan: And Other Tales, by Michael Cunningham Review
"Delicious, shivery, sophisticated fairy stories as spat from the pen of a Pulitzer Prize–winning author. 'Most of us are safe,' Cunningham writes in his astonishing preface. 'If you’re not a delirious dream the gods are having, if your beauty doesn’t trouble the constellations, nobody’s going to cast a spell on you.' But Cunningham will, and does. In a market oversaturated by reworked fairy tales, his are the best." ―Katy Waldman, Slate
"[A Wild Swan is] positively delectable. I had no idea Mr. Cunningham had it in him . . . He can't help but write movingly, even as he's setting fire to our most cherished childhood texts. The book is studded with unexpected moments of grace." ―Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
Five out of five stars. "While there was darkness in the original tales--blood, butchery and much else--Cunningham's collection brings emotional light and shade where there was none . . . The comedy in these stories works brilliantly, but it does not uncut the tragedy of its lonely and quietly tormented outsiders . . . These tales, short, contemporary, disturbing, and alluring, would make perfect vending-machine fodder: a transporting and enthralling read all the way home." ―Arifa Akbar, The Independent
"Michael Cunningham and Yuko Shimizu's A Wild Swan is an enchantment." ―Alissa Schappell, Vanity Fair"[Cunningham] has reimagined, and wickedly modernized, a batch of fairy tales (Yuko Shimizu's illustrations resemble the work of Aubrey Beardsley.) . . . Readers will savor Cunningham's wise, generous musings about (superbly) recognizable types." ―Joan Frank, San Francisco Chronicle
"'I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters,'" [Virginia] Woolf wrote in the diary entry Cunningham used as an epigraph to The Hours: 'I think that's exactly what I want: humanity, humor, depth.' Cunningham has performed a similar operation on the 10 tales he has selected for transformation . . . For the stories in A Wild Swan, Cunningham has dug out caves of humanity, humor and depth behind some well-known characters." ―Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review
"A rollicking and memorable tribute to stories we know.. . . [Cunningham’s] prose brings back much of the original swagger and sharpness. . . . [He] is extremely funny and psychologically observant. . . . Beautiful, imaginative illustrations by Yuko Shimizu, complement the stories, spurring the feeling that this is not just a book to read, but also a special object.” ―The Economist
“Remixing myths and fairy tales in this new collection - beautifully illustrated by Yuko Shimizu - Cunningham stands magic on its head. . . . Cunningham never condescends to his characters. Instead, he inhabits them.” ―Kit Reed, Miami Herald
"The original tales are timeless for good reasons, and by approaching them from a fresh and astute perspective with humor and compassion, Cunningham revitalizes their profound resonance. Imaginatively illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, this is a dazzling twenty-first-century fairy-tale collection of creative verve and keen enchantment. Cunningham’s high stature and the book’s irresistible premise will attract lively media attention and reader curiosity." ―Donna Seaman, Booklist
"The latest from Cunningham (The Snow Queen) offers elegant, sardonic retellings of 10 iconic fairy tales . . . Cunningham’s tales enlarge rather than reduce the haunting mystery of their originals. Striking black-and-white images from illustrator Shimizu add a fitting visual counterpoint to a collection at once dark and delightful." ―Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Michael Cunningham is the author of seven novels, including A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. He lives in New York.
Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese illustrator based in New York, whose work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her first self-titled monograph was released from Gestalten in 2011; her first children's book illustrations appeared in Barbed Wire Baseball, written by Marissa Moss. Shimizu teaches illustration at the School of Visual Arts.
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Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. This is a beautiful book, which has possibly swayed my decision from ... By moviegoer This is a beautiful book, which has possibly swayed my decision from four stars up to five. Michael Cunningham's deft, nuancedtake on fairy tales and old stories brings new insights into the material, but the greatest virtue is simply his writing. Each sentence isboth strong and beautiful. When he uses dialogue or first person, the tales are a treat to read, and in third person, Cunningham oftenmanages a dry, ironic tone which lightens the material even further.And the illustrations are gorgeous, adding hugely to the pleasure the book gives a reader. I enjoyed it tremendously, and recommendit to any reader with a taste for something slightly different.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful. An excellent collection of grownup fairy tales from a talented author By Bookreporter Michael Cunningham's new collection of short stories, one that updates an assortment of classic fairy tales, may strike admirers of novels like his Pulitzer Prize-winning THE HOURS or his most recent, THE SNOW QUEEN, as a radical departure from the literary fiction that has earned him his estimable reputation. That would be an erroneous conclusion, for each one of these emphatically grownup stories reveals again Cunningham's talent for characterization, his psychological acuity and his radiant prose. Best of all, for the brief time it takes to consume them, every story is a pure joy to read.While A WILD SWAN's stories, enhanced by a generous selection of striking black-and-white drawings from illustrator Yuko Shimuzu, are uniformly excellent, inevitably there are standouts. The impoverished widow and her son ("not a kid who can be trusted to remember to take his mother to her chemo appointment, or to close the windows when it rains") in Cunningham's darkly comic retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk" are less the beneficiaries of an unexpected and happy reversal of fortune than they are an object lesson in greed. When Jack returns with bags of gold after his first trip up the beanstalk, his mother invests the loot in "stocks and real estate," allowing them to rebuild a home with "seven fireplaces, cathedral ceilings, indoor and outdoor pools." But his third and final climb, when "there's nothing left for him and his mother to buy," is motivated, not by need, but by the fundamental human truth that we "always want more, though. Some of us want more than others, it's true, but we always want more of…something.""Little Man" is an emotionally powerful retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" from the point of view of the "two-hundred-year-old gnome" whose magic enables a young woman to spin straw into gold, saving her life and securing the hand of the king. Cunningham's sympathetic portrait of that strange little man's deep longing for a child brings us sadness, rather than relief, when the princess succeeds in naming him and keeping her child.Cunningham also skillfully channels the mood of a Stephen King horror story in the chilling tale "A Monkey's Paw," when a mother and father, granted three wishes, must live with the tragic consequences of their wish for the 200 pounds they need to pay off the mortgage on their home. Equally eerie is the title story, where a young prince whose right arm is a swan's wing spends his nights "in one of the bars on the city's outer edges, the ones that cater to people who were only partly cured of their curses or not cured at all."Cunningham freshens every one of these well-known stories with the care and respect one would expect from a writer of his talent, in the process revealing something new about why their appeal endures. "Her Hair," a version of the Grimm Brothers' "Rapunzel" that dispenses with everything that occurs before the lovestruck prince's fall from the tower into a thorn bush, blinding him, also radically reimagines the story's ending in a way that's much more moving than the "happily ever after" conclusion of its traditional counterpart. In "Crazy Old Lady," Hansel and Gretel are not the innocents whose quick thinking saves them from a horrible death, but instead "young psychopaths" who exhibit "that hungrily alert quality you see sometimes in kids who have been knocked around a little."In a recent NPR interview, Cunningham commented, "I'm not here to improve you in any way, I'm here to tell you a story." That's an entirely too modest assessment of this delightful collection.Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Wonderful retellings of traditional tales By MommaMia I came across this book quite by accident and thought I would give it a try. I normally don't read short stories, but the idea of traditional fairy tales retold was too much for me to resist. I was not disappointed.Each story was a surprise, told with wit, laced with irony. Eleven stories (Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, Rumpelstilskin, etc.), one more intriguing than the next. My two favorites were Beasts (who doesn't love Beauty and the Beast?) and A Monkey's Paw, a story that teaches us to be careful what we wish for.I highly recommend this collection of short stories for lovers of traditional fairy tales and those intrigued by Twilight Zone type stories.
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