A Wild Winter Swan by Gregory Maguire

Synopsis
Following her brother’s death and her mother’s emotional breakdown, Laura now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a lonely townhouse she shares with her old-world, strict, often querulous grandparents. But the arrangement may be temporary. The quiet, awkward teenager has been getting into trouble at home and has been expelled from her high school for throwing a record album at a popular girl who bullied her. When Christmas is over and the new year begins, Laura may find herself at boarding school in Montreal.

Nearly unmoored from reality through her panic and submerged grief, Laura is startled when a handsome swan boy with only one wing lands on her roof. Hiding him from her ever-bickering grandparents, Laura tries to build the swan boy a wing so he can fly home. But the task is too difficult to accomplish herself. Little does Laura know that her struggle to find help for her new friend parallels that of her grandparents, who are desperate for a distant relative’s financial aid to save the family store.

As he explores themes of class, isolation, family, and the dangerous yearning to be saved by a power greater than ourselves, Gregory Maguire conjures a haunting, beautiful tale of magical realism that illuminates one young woman’s heartbreak and hope as she begins the inevitable journey to adulthood.

Review
It has been about ten years since I read the utterly amazing Wicked by Gregory Maguire, and I already have a couple of his books sitting on my bookshelves. I was overjoyed to be offered to be part of the blog tour for his new book A Wild Winter Swan, an updated retelling of The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Anderson. Set in the early 1960’s New York in the run up to Christmas, fifteen year old Laura finds herself expelled from school and facing being sent to a Convent school in Montreal. Finding it hard to make her grandparent’s understand her feelings, Laura looses her self by telling stories about her life, and then one night a fairytale comes to her in the form a handsome boy with a swan wing in place of his left arm. His appearance turns Laura’s world around, giving her a new focus, and a need to help him return to wherever he came from. This is a beautiful book, of a young girls’s coming of age, with a touch of magic.

At just under two hundred and thirty pages long I read A Wild Winter Swan in just one sitting as I was completely lost in this enchanting book. I remembered reading the fairytale The Wild Swans as a child and I think Gregory Maguire has created a brilliant new story inspired by the fairytale. It is no coincidence that Laura is fifteen years of age and being sent to boarding school in Montreal by her grandparents, in the fairy tale Elise, sister to the eleven princes turned into swans by her wicked stepmother, is also fifteen when she is banished from her country, and Laura’s Nonna is the one banishing her. Laura is living with her grandparents as her mother is unwell after loosing first Laura’s father and then her brother, and is consumed by grief. Her Nonna and Nonno are set in their ways, expect for her to behave in a certain way influenced by their Italian heritage, and feel they can no longer cope with her. Having been expelled from school she has no friends, and the only person she really talks to is their cook Mary Bernice, and the workmen who are working at the house. Laura is a character I really took to my heart, fifteen is a hard age, turning into a young woman, and she is doing it alone which is heartbreaking. It is not her grandparents fault, they are elderly, feeling the pressure of running their own store and believe they are doing the best for Laura but Laura sees this a betrayal, as if she is being pushed away again. Through the book Laura writes her own story, what she is feeling and experiencing, her way of coping. When Hans appears, all handsome and in need of help, Laura has to keep him a secret whilst wnting to help him; he gives her a new perspective and as a result a chance to put things right.

Gregory Maguire’s wrtitng style is as lyrical and enchanting as the story he tells. The setting of 1960’s New York, in the snow in the build up to Christmas is magical, with a feeling of innocence and a kind of romance about it, like from a classic movie. I think this very much mirrors Laura’s innocence of the world, protected in her grandparents house, with her mother unwell and dying in a hospital. I found it interesting reading about Laura’s grandparents, immigrants from Italy, trying to learn a new language and find their feet in a very different world, in contrast, to Laura is a second generation teenager, with a foot in each world, but she is also trying to find her feet. The fantasy element adds the magic to this book, a different dimension to the story, and focusus on the idea of Laura needing to spread her won wings to be who she should.

With Christmas coming up The Wild Winter Swan is the perfect read and would make a fabulous present for a reader of any age. Whilst this is not a complete retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale, Gregory Maguire captures the magic of the original and the idea of self sacrifice in helping others. Beautiful flowing prose and an enchanting story make this a stunning and sublime read; I loved it!!

I would like to thank Harper 360 and Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for invivting me to be part of this wonderful blog tour.