Synopses & Reviews
Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize – winning author of The Hours.
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Slate, and Bustle.
A 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 constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread. 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. 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.
Review
"[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
Review
"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 (Five out of five stars)
Review
"Michael Cunningham and Yuko Shimizu's A Wild Swan is an enchantment." Alissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
Review
"[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
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
Synopsis
Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Slate, and Bustle
A 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 constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread. 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. 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.
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 The Snow Queen, as well as Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. He lives in New York City and teaches at Yale University.
Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese illustrator based in New York City whose work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her self-titled monograph was published by Gestalten in 2011, and her drawings appeared in Barbed Wire Baseball, written by Marissa Moss. Shimizu teaches illustration at the School of Visual Arts.