Why does the most obvious thing, the only thing that doesn’t need to be said, hurt so much when it is actually said out loud?
Gregory Maguire, A WILD WINTER SWAN
Hey look, a blog! What is this strange, magical contraption for writing one’s thoughts about books and other topics in long form?
Happy New Year, everyone. After taking a few months away from Bookshelves & Babble to juggle Mom’s passing with finishing up fall semester of grad school, I’m hoping to start writing book reviews here again instead of just lazily posting a few sentences over on Instagram. (Aiming for only once or twice month, though. Because, you know, grad school.)
Before we get too far away from Christmas/New Year’s Eve/Solstice/Winter holidays, I definitely want to share this book with y’all, because I haven’t talked to too many people who’ve read it yet and that’s a shame.
Look, Gregory Maguire has written approximately 5,000 books. Some of them get loosely adapted into juggernaut musicals. He’s got a thing going. You may have read all of them, you may have read none of them, you may have read one and then decided Gregory Maguire’s not your thing. Before picking up A Wild Winter Swan I’d read…two, I think? His novel Wicked completely captivated me the first time I read it, and I’ve read it more than once. I borrowed the first sequel from the library, and wasn’t as big a fan of that one. (How have I never even read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister? I’m just now realizing that I haven’t.)
But I kept walking by this new novel in the store and it kept calling to me. For one thing, the book itself is gorgeous – the under-jacket case illustrations by Scott McKowen are spectacular. I finally caved and bought it on a whim, and I’m glad I did.
THE STORY
Loosely inspired by one small detail in Hans Christian Anderson’s tale The Wild Swans — in Anderson’s tale, one of the brothers-turned-swans is never completely turned back into a human, and is left with one arm as a swan wing — A Wild Winter Swan takes place in mid-twentieth century New York City. Cleverly, and perhaps because The Wild Swans might not be as universally known as some other Anderson tales, Maguire has his heroine, Laura, tell the tale to the children she babysits in an early chapter. Not only does this trick familiarize the reader with the source material, but it also keeps the story in Laura’s mind as well, an important fact later on.
Laura has come to live with her Italian immigrant grandparents after a series of family tragedies (i.e., first her father’s and now her brother’s untimely deaths) has led to her mother’s mental breakdown. She lives on the top floor of their crumbling three-story townhome in New York City. (Ah, the 1960s, when such a thing was still possible to acquire!) Due to a mishap at her private school, where she’s never felt particularly at home anyway, Laura has been expelled. Her grandmother Nonna has told Laura that she will not be welcomed back to school, or any other school in NYC, and the only other option is a boarding school in Canada. Nonna and grandfather Nonno are struggling to save Nonno’s floundering business in order to pay for Laura’s tuition – and to do that, they’ll need to secure and investment from Nonna’s sister’s new boyfriend, the wealthy Corm Kennedy. The whole deal, because of course, hinges on an important dinner at their home on Christmas Eve, which Corm Kennedy will attend.
Unfortunately for Nonna and Nonno, around this time a nearly-mute teenage boy with a swan wing where one arm should be crash lands into Laura’s upper-story window. She manages to get a name out of him — Hans — and gradually realizes that he must be a character from her favorite Hans Christian Anderson story, impossible or no. He doesn’t become a friend, but he does become company, while also chastely helping her to discover the first stirrings of her own sexuality.
As she sets about trying to return him to his own family and keep him from ruining her grandparent’s important dinner, she becomes reluctant allies and then possible friends with Maxine, the girl whose broken nose got her expelled. But when Hans’ animal instincts destroy her family’s big night, she realizes the only option is to set him free as quickly as possible.
THE BABBLE
[FROM HERE THERE BE BIG SPOILERS. YE HAVE BEEN WARNED.]
Maguire’s tone throughout feels somewhat distant — almost chilly, you might say, appropriate for a winter tale — and I liked that. It echoed the feel of reading Hans Christian Anderson or another older folk tale. The narration stays close to Laura’s thoughts, though, and that’s an important detail. Toward the end of the novel, I think (and this is just me, you may have a completely different reading) that the reader is suddenly supposed to question Laura’s sanity.
How reliable is Laura as a protagonist? No one else has seen Hans, and the damage he’s created could easily have be created by Laura herself. We know that her mother suffers from mental illness. Has Laura had a similar outburst of illness triggered by the knowledge that she will soon have to leave for Canada? Are we in a warped, fairy-tale Fight Club situation here? Laura’s heartbreaking conversation with Nonno on Christmas Eve punches holes in the entire story we’ve read up to that point, despite the gorgeously written Central Park escape scene between Hans and Laura that follows. And I do mean gorgeous…though I admit to being a sucker for any scene involving the Bethesda Fountain.
And Hans. He’s a cipher. Some might have an issue with that, but I loved it. Maguire never lets you forget that Hans is as much a foreign creature(bird) as a human teenager. He rages against his confinement, against huger, against basically everything. (You know, like a teenager. And an animal.) Anyone who finds a swan a strange fit for such behavior has obviously never met a swan in real life. But Hans also quiets into moments of temporary peace with Laura. The scene where she sleeps curled beside him is moving — two lost teenagers, both refusing to completely trust the only people left who want to take care of them.
I also loved the way that the setting of 1960s New York allowed Maguire to examine the class system in the US. While I fully acknowledge that I’m far from an expert on this topic, I thought that the relationship between cook Mary Bernice and her employers subtly illustrated just how fluid the notion of “whiteness” has always been in America, and how much the goalpost has shifted in even in the past 60 to 70 years. We, as a society, tend to forget how fluid it really is. Reading a book in which Italian immigrants like Nonna and Nonno are taking accent-reduction classes in order to pass for “white,” so they can impress upper-class characters like Corm Kennedy, in contrast to Irish immigrant Mary Bernice, who seems more comfortable in her own skin, serves as an effective and crucial reminder about such things.
More holiday-themed novels for every reading age begin popping up on shelves around November and December every year, most of them involving elves or prepubescent Santa or magic trains or romcom characters. And that’s lovely. But if you’re one of the many, many people for whom the holidays aren’t all merry and bright, or if you’re just looking for a different sort of winter tale with a few Christmas trappings but zero Christmas cheese, I highly recommend this quick and unusual read.
RATING
* * * *
RANDOM BABBLE
- In the dedications and the leading quotes, Maguire strongly suggests that Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers not only gave him the idea for this novel, but specifically tasked him to write it. If that’s true then I love it so much.
- I love all of the imagery Maguire uses to reflect Laura’s imperfect attempts at independence: the baby owl from the novel who’s not quite ready to fly away, the homemade wing, restless pacing at the top floor of the house…it’s all the obvious images one would use, but it all smacks of failure to launch as well.
- I also appreciated the slow burn of Laura’s frenemy relationship with Maxine. Maxine comes over to apologize, Laura doesn’t accept her apology – fine. She doesn’t have to accept it. Then Maxine wants to bond because she got something she wanted out of the accident, and maybe that allows Laura to accept the olive branch? By the end of the novel it’s still a little unclear how Laura feels about finally having a real friend, and that might be okay. Girl’s got some serious trauma.
- Speaking of trauma. Loved how delicately the scene with her searching through her brother’s old clothes to find Hans something to wear was handled.
- Okay, so. I’m not Italian American, so I’m not the best judge. But Maguire walks a fine line with Nonna and Nonno, and I think he succeeds? Their struggles with language are comedic at times, but I think they always remain 100% sympathetic. These poor grandparents are doing the best they can to raise a difficult teenager. They clearly love her. They have real concerns. To my eyes, at least, they never fell into lazy stereotype, but I’d love to hear from another reader in a better position to judge.
Bookshelves & Babble 