Gregory Maguire's latest novel, A Wild Winter Swan (#949) was inspired by the late P.L. Travers (author of the Mary Poppins books) to write about a character in a lesser-known Hans Christian Anderson story. It concerns an evil stepmother who enchants the noisy boys in her new family and turns them into swans. Their only sister learns that if she spins and weaves shirts for each of the boys and throws them over the boys when they return for their once-a-year visit in human form, they will remain human forever. Alas, she isn't able to complete the very last shirt in time; it's minus a sleeve, so one of her youngest brother's arms remains a wing.
Laura Ciardi is a troubled teenager living with her Italian grandparents in a New York City brownstone. Just before Christmas, she's been expelled from her exclusive school, and her grandparents are at their wits' end trying to cope with her. They decide to send her to a convent school in Montreal after the holidays. Of course Laura doesn't want to go. There's not much she seems to want to do, in fact. That changes the night a boy with a swan's wing flies onto the ledge outside her attic window. He's entirely wild and has no idea how he got there. He just knows he's hungry and he wants out of Laura's room...
I can't decide whether I liked this book or not. The characters were so unlikeable. Laura was the root of most her own problems - a typical selfish teenager who can't think beyond her own skin. Hans, the swan-boy, was mostly repellent. Personally, I would have pushed him out the window within minutes of meeting him. The grandparents tried so hard, but were so busy trying to make a go of their imported food business that they neglected Laura and left her to the tender mercies of the Irish cook. There was no fairy tale ending here, not even for Hans. At least I read it at the right time of year - it is set in the weeks around Christmas, but frankly I prefer my Christmas stories with a stronger element of redemption. I guess after re-reading what I've written here, I really didn't like A Wild Winter Swan.
No comments:
Post a Comment