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    A Wild Swan: And Other Tales
    A Wild Swan: And Other Tales
    A Wild Swan: And Other Tales
    Audiobook2 hours

    A Wild Swan: And Other Tales

    Written by Michael Cunningham

    Narrated by Lili Taylor and Billy Hough

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours

    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 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, our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.

    Program contains music composed specifically for the audiobook by Billy Hough and his bandmates in GarageDogs. Billy Hough says: "The original piece 'A Wild Swan' was written as a gift to Michael, due to my incredibly strong reaction to hearing these beautiful stories for the first time. I enlisted the brilliant Lili Taylor to alternate the stories with me, and wrote a series of short pieces of music, for their eventual inclusion on this album. I wanted to use the music to illustrate the tension between the ancient and the modern, much in the same way Michael has done in the stories themselves."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateNov 10, 2015
    ISBN9781427262226
    A Wild Swan: And Other Tales
    Author

    Michael Cunningham

    Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels including A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours, Specimen Days, and non-fiction book, Land’s End: A Walk Through Provincetown. The Hours was awarded both the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award and made into an internationally acclaimed, Oscar-winning film. His new novel, The Snow Queen, will be published in May of 2014. He lives in New York.

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    Reviews for A Wild Swan

    4/5

    93 ratings13 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I enjoy reading retellings of familiar stories. This book was a nice, quick read, with some different takes on stories we know well. Side note: This pick was my "blind date with a book" from a nearby library. I love this idea.
    • 4/5
      Cunningham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has re-imagined 10 fairy tales either by Hans Christian Andersen or the brothers Grimm. By listening to the book you miss the interesting black and white illustrations by Yuko Shimizu, but the stories have a contemporary edge and are very entertaining.
    • 5/5
      Michael Cunningham's clever twists on traditional fairy tales provides not-for-the-kids entertainment in macabre and dark fashion. Although we all know that even the traditional fairy tales were sanitized for children (they are all really rather dark and violent by nature), Cunningham's take on such familiar tales as "Snow White" and "Rapunzel" adds a layer of psychological and emotional complexity that really elevates the stories to an entirely different plane.Having never read anything by Cunningham, I was impressed with his writing. (I have since discovered that he is a Pultizer Prize-winner, which doesn't surprise me, based on the quality and depth of his writing in "A Wild Swan.") Descriptions in each story are beautifully conveyed with just the right bit of humor, irony, sadness, and anger. The stunning illustrations by Yuko Shimizu are a perfect match for Cunningham, easily evoking the exact emotions that Cunningham elicits from his writing.This book was a very fast read, and I enjoyed every story (although my favorite was his take on "Beauty and the Beast"). Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This a quick short story collection of dark fairy tale retelling for adults by Michael Cunningham the author of the Hours. This, however, is much different from the Hours. These make great stories to read before bedtime.

      Some of the stories I didn't really care for, like the first and last one, but others I liked enough. I think my favorite one was called "Beasts," a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast." I liked "Crazy Old Lady" and "Little Man" as well, which both are told in second person.

      Besides Cunningham's name, Yuko Shimizu's name is another reason I got this book. I love her covers for the comic book Unwritten. I kind of wish some of these illustrations were in color and bigger, but they fit for the setting.

      If you are a fan of dark twisted retelling or Michael Cunningham's style this book is for you. Keep in mind this isn't the Hours. I like that he wrote something completely different.
    • 4/5
      A collection of re-worked fairy tales with flawed though familiar characters and a contemporary spin, but retaining the fairy-tale magic. For instance ...

      "This was not a smart boy we're talking about .... Jack is the boy who says 'Wow, dude, magic beans, really!' "

      The tales are a little wicked, some a little bawdy, but also quite humorous. One's I liked are:

      Crazy Old Lady (Hansel and Gretel)
      Jacked (Jack and the Beanstalk)
      Little Man. (Rumplestiltskin)
      Her Hair (Rapunzul)

      And The Monkey's Paw

      4 stars overall (I'd give some of the tales 5 stars)
    • 5/5
      Magical and realistic and wonderful and hard to describe. Just go read it.
    • 5/5
      If you love fairy tales but want a modern twist this is the perfect book! A short quick read but witty, creative and entertaining! Loved it!
    • 3/5
      "A Wild Swan: And Other Tales" by Michael Cunningham; Lili Taylor and Billy Hough, narratorsThis brief, clever and creative re-imagining of childhood fairytales for adults is entertaining. I found some interesting, some humorous, some philosophical and some, truthfully, a bit pointless. Still, it was an interesting respite from the hassles of everyday life, and I enjoyed wondering how the tales would be reshaped. Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Monkey’s Paw are just three of the many presented in a different version than we originally read them as children.
    • 5/5
      A well re imagined modern take on the fairy tales of my childhood although I don't think I shall be reading them to my future grandchildren!
      My favourite is Rumpelstiltskin, written from the goblin's point of view.
      The Yuko Shimizu artwork is stunning and really makes the stories come alive for me.
      Great fun!
      I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Harper Collins via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
    • 4/5
      I thought most of the stories were fantastic -- humorous, wry and wise. The illustrations and book design are outstanding and really make this a beautiful book. Bravo for putting together such a nice work of art.I did feel, however, that the last two stories weren't up to the mark, and wonder if someone was pressuring Cunningham to pad this slim volume. It's something you used to see with some records, too, once upon a time. I would advise readers to just skip those last two. Make your own mix-tape, as it were.
    • 3/5
      Not the usual type of book I read but am willing to try anything written by this author. To my surprise I enjoyed it very much. Taking many of our beloved fairytale and giving them a very inventive modern twist was pure entertainment. Many were extremely amusing, so very clever. But..... while Cunningham's wit and originality were in fine display I missed his ingenious plots and his expansiveness that is more adequately displayed in his novels. Still very entertaining, a quick read that was more than worth my time.
    • 5/5
      This review is for the audio version of Michael Cunningham's A Wild Swan. I am a fan of retelling a familiar story from either a different perspective (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) or with a different emphasis, which this collection does with several fairy tales. This collection succeeds primarily because it keeps the basic structure of each tale but delves a bit deeper into the psychology motivating the characters. The originals were primarily written to influence the actions of the reader, to establish or enforce the norms of the time. While that is not lost in these stories, the emphasis is on an almost tongue-in-cheek psychological analysis (and the periodic sociological analysis as well) of the characters.The audio version was tremendous! I have to disclose that I am a big fan of Lili Taylor so I started out a bit biased, I'm sure. She delivered as I expected and Billy Hough was also phenomenal. They did a masterful job of highlighting key passages through subtle intonations and pauses.I would definitely recommend the audio version to anyone interested in short tales and in nuanced modernizations of classic tales.Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
    • 2/5
      After being so deeply touched by The Hours this collection was a huge letdown. Read more like a junior high writing assignment. Didn't bother reading the last 25 pages, already took up too much time.