Review | A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham

So. This was interesting. A good interesting, I think?

A Wild Swan is a collection of grown-up, subversive, modernized fairy tales that focus on the moments not captured in traditional texts.

Sort of.

The book momentously downplays the “fairy” part of “fairy tale” — and instead uses traditional folklore as a framing device. The collection offers a dark, disenchanted, and sombre reflection on society, relationships, and human nature. And, unlike the original tales, there isn’t really an optimistic/helpful take-home moral. You’re left feeling rather jaded and disillusioned:

Fairy tales are generally moral tales. In the bleaker version of this one [Jack and the Beanstalk], mother and son both starve to death. That lesson would be: Mothers, try to be realistic about your imbecilic sons, no matter how charming their sly little grins, no matter how heartbreaking the dark-gold tousle of their hair.

What I liked:

The Six Swans. This is one of my favourite fairy tales … and it doesn’t get nearly enough attention. (Listen to the Grimm version here!) Subverted as it is, the inclusion of this story completely made my day.

The Variety. On top of The Six Swans, Cunningham offers a nice variety of more-common and more-obscure tales. This was nice to see in a world were Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella retellings reign.

The Illustrations by Yuko Shimizu. A little bit of whimsy. A little gothic. They’re perfect for the material.

The Length. Each story came in at about 10 pages, which made them perfect for bedtime / waiting for the bus / sitting at the doctor’s office.

What I didn’t like:

The Content. There’s nothing particularly novel about fairy tale retellings — ditto for dark and modern retellings. Though entertaining, A Wild Swan isn’t particularly memorable.

The Darkness.  Alright – we’re all aware the Disney versions of fairy tales are exceptionally watered-down relative to their source material. The Grimm’s tales are full of murder and plotting … and, there are still-older and much darker versions out there. I’m OK with this if it serves a function. That wasn’t the case with A Wild Swan: it felt like a lot of the grittiness/brooding was added in simply for the sake of grittiness/brooding/being pretentious.

Favourite quote:

Eventually, decades later, when the king was dying, the queen gently ushered everybody out into the corridor, closed the door to the royal bedchamber, and got into bed with her husband. She started singing to him. They laughed. He was short of breath, but he could still laugh. They asked each other, Is this silly? Is this…pretentious? But they both knew that everything there was to say had been said already, over and over, across the years. And so the king, relieved, released, free to be silly, asked her to sing him a song from his childhood. He didn’t need to be regal anymore, he didn’t need to seem commanding or dignified, not with her. They were, in their way, dying together, and they both knew it. It wasn’t happening only to him. So she started singing. They shared one last laugh – they agreed that the cat had a better voice than she did. Still, she sang him out of the world.

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The Details:

• The Book: A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham
• Published: 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• My Copy: KFPL
• Read date: May 29 – June 5, 2019
• Rating: ★★★☆☆
• You should read listen to this if you like … gritty, urban-infused fairy tales
• Avoid this if you dislike … The Tenth Kingdom