In A Wild Swan : And Other Tales, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham re-imagines eight classic fairytales and The Monkey's Paw (all from a decidedly adult point of view), and opens and closes with some original writing. While the unique viewpoints were interesting, and while the writing itself was very good, I couldn't help but think, in the end, that this collection is a little pointless.
Some of the stories were funny modernisations – Jack (of beanstalk fame) is a lazy man-child who refuses to move out of his mother's basement, even after stealing the Giant's riches; the witch (of the gingerbread house) was a boozy cougar until “it seemed as if the dresses themselves held you upright on the barstools” – but I thought the title story was the most poignant. I wasn't familiar with the tale of the twelve brothers turned into swans by their evil stepmother, so it was fresh to me that their sister was able to nearly completely reverse the spell: nearly because one brother was left with one swan wing. While that might be acceptable in a fairytale world, it comes with complications in ours. In trying to work out his identity, the swan-man thinks:
He could see himself selling himself as a compelling mutation, a young god, proud to the point of sexy arrogance of his anatomical deviation: ninety percent thriving muscled man-flesh and ten percent glorious blindingly white angel wing.So that's the level of the funny, and I did laugh at it. And there were some interesting alternate viewpoints – what happens after Rapunzel loses her hair and her prince has been blinded? What was going on in Rumpelstiltskin's mind when he decided to help the miller's daughter? – and with an adult narrator, there are opportunities for perceptive commentary, as in this explanation for why the Giant's wife allowed Jack to run off with her husband's riches as he slept:
Baby, these feathers are going to tickle you halfway to heaven, and this man-part is going to take you the rest of the way.
We all know couples like this. Couples who've been waging the battle for decades; who seem to believe if finally, someday, one of them can prove the other wrong – deeply wrong, soul-wrong – they'll be exonerated, and released. Amassing the evidence, working toward the proof, can swallow an entire life.And like I said, there was some really fine writing here. I was struck by this description of the son having an industrial accident in A Monkey's Paw:
Their son has been snatched up by his machine, as if he were the raw material for some product made of manglement, of bone shards and snapped sinews, of blood-spray that turned quickly, before the eyes of the other workers, from red to black.
No review could be complete without mentioning the remarkable illustrations done by Yuko Shimizu – in every instance, these retro pen-and-inks were shocking and evocative; stories of their own. Poisoned was motoring along as this very interesting story about a couple negotiating the husband's fetish – Prince Charming is apparently turned on by putting Snow White back to sleep in the glass coffin and rescuing her afresh before getting down to business – and while Snow White seems willing to play her role for his pleasure, this illustration made me gasp:
And yet, like I started with, despite my basic enjoyment of these brief retellings, the collection did feel a little pointless in the end. A fine way to spend a couple of hours, but not the kind of book that I'd urge onto anyone.
I don't tend to reproduce illustrations, so I sincerely hope that I'm not contravening Yuko Shimizu's copyright here: all credit to this incredible artist, my intent is simply to share my love of her work
