So I don’t think I will win over many people by saying that A Wild Swan is a collection of short stories; but its well known European fairy tales are retold for a more adult, modern audience. Yeah, there have been plenty of movie and book re-tellings of fairy tales presented in many different ways- could be a campy musical, or a dark young adult novel, or a big budget action movie…
So why read this one? Well for one thing, many of modern adaptations of fairy tales try to stretch one story into full novel length, or they mash together a lot of fairy tale stories into one. But A Wild Swan (from the amazing author of The Hours) keeps each of its stories separate and brief, like the original tales. Also, fairy and folk tales were really meant to teach a lesson, and these stories do teach lessons, but different, more grown-up ones. For example, “The Tin Soldier” retelling is about the obstacles of marriage. It was really fun after I read each story to sit and think about what it was trying to say. In some of the tales it was pretty obvious, but in some, it was a bit more subtle, or weirdly disguised.
A Wild Swan keeps many of the strange elements left over from a history of oral storytelling, and I wish I could read it deep in the woods at night or something. A lot of the stories are told from the point of view of the villain, and there’s plenty of thorn-covered, derelict settings. (And eerily pretty illustrations by Yuko Shimizu!) But since the structure of each story is geared around the lesson it is teaching, the settings don’t feel too alienating.
That brings me to the most important part. Sure, all of this stuff is cool and all, but is it interesting? It certainly was for me. I read the entire short story collection in one sitting because I wanted to see what the next story had to offer. Some of them have really good twists to them, and a lot of the intrigue comes from you trying to predict what will happen because you’ve read “Hansel and Gretel” before, but then the story takes another direction, then another. And then you sit and think about what the moral was, before tackling the next story. As someone who’s read about a hundred renditions of “Beauty and the Beast”, Cunningham’s take is one of the best.
So, funnily enough, by staying a bit more true to the original source material, A Wild Swan is able to offer something much more unique and addicting than many of the other adaptations I’ve seen. If you love fairy tales, but found yourself a bit bored watching Disney’s recent live action Cinderella movie, this book is for you.
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