What do you say about a book that ripped your heart from your chest & shattered it into a thousand pieces? Left you ugly sobbing on the floor? How do I give it a rating? Loved it but it nearly killed me...

An enthralling book. The simultaneous plots set 300 years apart was a fascinating structure, and the characters were heartfelt and sympathetic. Definitely surprised me, and made me a bit teary-eyed by the end.

I first read this book in high school. It's now been over two decades. I've re-read it since that first time, but have not in a really long time. I was scared, most likely, with how it will hold up. I shouldn't have worried because I still loved it. Kerr weaves two very different stories together - one a retelling of The Wild Swans fairy tale; the story of a young gay man during the beginning of the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

Both have themes of finding your place in the world and your home. And also about the importance of one's voice. Eliza couldn't speak while she was weaving her brother's coats. Elias had to find his voice. There's the implication that Elias and others in his story are reincarnations of those in Eliza's. Which is at once both a subtle stretch, but also especially poignant when you realize who are connected to who.

Beautiful and heartbreaking.

A find, a buried treasure, a true beauty of a gem. I simply could not stop reading this book.
Kerr tells two stories side by side. One is a very true retelling of Andersen's fairy tale of the same name -- mostly set in Colonial America (beginning in England). The other is an early 80s "fairy" tale of a young gay man coming out to the world at the beginning of the AIDS discovery. Each story barely overlaps, yet displays subtle similarities that keep you wondering when they will meet each other. The characters are precious, and I was filled grief and hope throughout, plus anger for the bigotry and fear permeating both times.

Not my usual genre

But really enjoyed this book, highly recommended, please give a try, it’s definitely worth it. Would read it again .

I enjoyed the historical telling but really didn't like the contemporary one.

I pulled this book off a library stack on a whim; it was by an author i'd never heard of and i didn't expect much from it; instead i found myself moved almost to tears by the end both by Eliza's familiar (I was a big fan of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales as a kid) yet still compelling story and its counterpart set in somewhat more contemporary times, when a young man exiled from his former life finds family, friends and love within the early 1980s gay subculture of New York, only to contend with slowly losing said family, friends and love to a curse as grave and costly as the one set on Eliza's brothers.

Elias' chapters are somewhat better than Eliza's due to richer characterizations (Most of her brothers are only mentioned in passing and by name if extremely lucky; Elias and Sean's clique of friends fare much better in the development/personality departments) and some attempts to bridge the two stories come off a wee bit hamhanded, which keeps this book at four stars instead of five. Still an excellent read for anyone who loves a tragic love story.

Kerr tells two stories in alternating chapters, the story of Eliza, in the seventeenth century, whose stepmother has enchanted her eleven brothers so that they are swans by day and men only by night, and the story of Elias, in the early eighties in New York, whose parents have kicked him out. They're both interesting, compelling stories, and I enjoyed both them. I don't, though, see the close parallels between them that Kerr says in an afterword motivated her, beyond a rather tenuous theme of "what's family". The motivations of the parental units are different, their actions are different, the responses of Eliza and Elias are different, and the outcomes are different. One is severely let down by adopted family; every important member of the other's adopted family stands firm. One succeeds in defeating the evil that oppresses them; the other can only defeat it in spirit. One story is fantasy; the other is mainstream mimetic fiction.

On the other hand, each contains an obvious mistake about an easily checked background detail. (Witches were not burned alive in England; Catholic priests released from their vows retain the power to perform the sacraments.)

I have one additional complaint about Elias' story. There's someone at the beginning who helps him survive his first days on the streets, and tries to teach him survival skills for living in the streets. When Elias gets a chance to get off the streets, he quite rightly jumps at it. From the point of view of that first person to befriend him, though, he must have seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, in circumstances where his having gotten killed would not be out of the question. When Eliza walks away from the people who know her, some of whom care about her, she has a compelling reason for not attempting any contact with them again, at least until after the end of the story. Elias, though, had some options for at least attempting to get word to his street friend that he didn't die bleeding in an alley, even if he didn't want to make direct contact--a personal ad, for instance. As far as the reader can tell from the text of the story, though, Elias never thinks about that person again, once his luck changes.

But I repeat that these are both good stories, and I enjoyed both of them. Kerr does a good job of making the reader care about each of her protagonists, and the problems that confront them.

This book was very different. I cannot say I have ever read anything quite like it. I preferred the modern story myself and was so saddened to know what was going to happen but kept on reading. I could not put this book down. The fairy tale side was quirky but really cannot make up my mind if it worked or not or if it the reason why the book was great.

Two stories interwoven--the first is that of Eliza. Her eleven brothers have been cursed to be swans by day and men at night. To break the curse, Eliza must make coats from nettles, but she cannot speak. She almost gets hanged as a witch because of her silence, but all ends well, and she finds a new home.

Elias is gay and has been disowned by his family. Descended from Eliza, he sees his new family suffer from the curse of AIDS. He eventually falls victim himself. Allusions to the other storyline with the hemophiliacs. Ends with the unveiling of the AIDS quilt.

**I received a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley**
This novel took my awhile to read, and I struggled with the rating. Here's why: I downloaded this novel in February from NetGalley and started reading in March. I just finished today, June 30—It took me most of the book to really understand the two alternating stories and their connection, one a fable-like retelling and one a modern-day retelling. I enjoyed the stories separately but felt like they would have been more successful alone. The stories didn't really need one another and the parallels of character names between the two storylines made me feel as though the "symbolism" was bashing me over the head.
A super short fable, maybe half of it at the beginning as a prologue, and half at the end as an epilogue would have suited this novel better and really allowed me as the reader to connect with the modern day characters. I constantly felt like there was this wall between myself and the modern-day timeline that I could not break down. The fable interrupted the story I really wanted to hear, and the shifting language was rough, particularly because the ebook version I was reading was not spaced properly and so words were merged together, paragraphs were separated mid-line and other little formatting things that kept jarring me from the narrative. Reading was a bit tedious because of this.
Overall, I could have done without the fictional version. Elias, Sean, and their community were immensely more entertaining, enlightening, and profound.
It is a novel that unfortunately is still extremely relevant in terms to the oddly similar climate toward those in the LGBTQ community. AIDS and how the disease is viewed and the struggles same-sex couples endure when claiming benefits, marrying and other basic relationship rights that heterosexual couples have. While we have made strides in the last twenty years, there is still much growth to be had and this novel is truly eye opening with how slowly those changes are occurring.
The retelling in modern-day terms would have received 4-stars, but the fable itself 3-stars.

This was a very difficult book to read, not because of the writing, but because of the subject matter. It deals with the AIDS epidemic on a very personal level. It juxtaposes a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Wild Swans” with a tale about a gay young man, kicked out by his family, and coming out in New York City in the early ‘80s. Having come out myself at about the same time, I lived through this period. Reading a book or seeing a film about it is very hard for me and brings up a lot of anger, terrible sadness, and survivor’s guilt. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book, with the way it told the two stories. Both stories left me emotionally devastated, but immensely satisfied as well. It was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award and won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2000.

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