A Wild Winter Swan
Gregory Maguire
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
A Wild Winter Swan
Gregory Maguire
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Maguire still has the magic touch.
A Wild Winter Swan, like so many of Maguire’s novels, could have been crafted in a lab with me in mind: a fairy tale retold! An inventive lonely heroine! A touch of magic in a recognizable world! And yet, it left me a little out in the cold. That isn’t to say that Maguire’s charms aren’t evident. He leans beautifully into imagery of owls and snow, holiday garlands and howling winds, elaborate meals prepared and yet not eaten.
Yuletide gives the story a traditional season for European fairytales, while its snow-dusted 1960s Manhattan setting brings childhood magic to a modern (but smartphone-free) venue familiar from Hollywood movies.
As Maguire has so often done before with books like Wicked and Mirror Mirror, A Wild Winter Swan is a delight of fantasy and the grotesquely beautiful in all of us..
At times, A Wild Winter Swan feels less like a fantasy novel and more like a family drama play with elements of magical realism. Conversations are deep and rich in subtext. Seemingly insignificant family details could mean life or death. And every step of the way, the imagery perfectly captures the feelings of the characters without ever stepping off the page and telling you why they are there.
Maguire, whose gift for transforming children's stories is most famously on display in Wicked, works his magic once again in this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Wild Swans. An enchanting, tender, often funny coming-of-age story whose perceptive truths about the human condition surprise and delight..
Sensitive depictions of generational and coming-of-age conflicts intertwine with whimsy as Maguire touchingly shows how people invoke stories to help elucidate their complicated world..
Maguire (Wicked) continues his fabulist fairy tale remixes with this enchanting story, which draws inspiration from the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Wild Swans.