I loved this book

I am struggling to gauge this book! I was, as usual, desperate to go the impossible and read DEERSKIN by Robin McKinley for the first time again, so I looked at the “if you liked this, you might also like...” section on here and THE WILD SWANS was there. The blurb sounded risky - was she going to write that AIDS is a magical curse? - but the reviews seemed to ok it. And it does what it says! It’s two interlinked stories, of the 17th and 20th centuries, magic and love and gay men and the early AIDS crisis and witchcraft. I sped through it, because both are great stories, but not sure the utility of them both being in the same book. Some spoilers in this review for similar thoughts as mine https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.tor.com/2020/08/20/five-r...

A beautiful and haunting story, with connections from to Eliza and her brothers in the puritan New England of the sevententh century to the storyline in NY in the 1980'ies, where her namesake Elias struggles to make a living. I was annoyed by the POV confusion (which sometimes alternated several times within the same page), but otherwise a readworthy story.

Like Jane Yolen's Briar Rose, this book uses a fairy tale to discuss serious modern issues, in this case homophobia and living with AIDS. The book is made up of two stories told in alternating chapters: the story of Eliza, which takes place in the 17th century and follows the original Wild Swans fairy tale, and the story of Elias, which takes place in the '80s. When Elias comes out to his parents, he is thrown out on the streets, and ends up contracting AIDS. Although I love the original fairy tale in all its variants, I was surprised to find Elias's story more compelling than Eliza's, although the 17th century language might have something to do with that. It is difficult to see how the stories fit together until the very end, which I've read over and over again because it's so sad and so lovely. You'll need your hankies for this one!

I rarely read this genre, but now and again i do like to try something different. This was a well written book, but it wasn't really a book that i can say that i really enjoyed. I'm not fond of stories that is told from two different time periods, despite it being done well. I can see that this book will appeal to many, but unfortunately, not for me.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy. This is my honest review, which i have voluntarily given.

I was blown away by this book. This is based on my absolute favorite fairy tale of all time, and so far any retellings I've read have been mediocre at best. I wondered how this gorgeous tale of love and devotion could be retold in 1980s New York - a time of prosperity and fun, forever tainted by the horror of AIDS as it devastated GLBTQ communities.

Easy - love and devotion doesn't change. Eliza's love for her brothers as she tries to break their curse is no different than Elias' love for his friends.

I remember when news about AIDS first hit, and of course all of the misinformation. I was in 1st grade. I remember not sharing my peppermint elf lip balm with a friend because I told her she might have AIDS. If we played in the backyard and got a mosquito bite, we had to tell an adult (who would just look worried and tell us to come inside, maybe spray Bactine on the bite),

Perhaps that is why Elias' story hit me so hard. Whatever fear I had at age 6 was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what men like him faced. Elias is such a sympathetic character who has been thrown out by his biological family and, through the mesmerizing Sean, finds his true family in NYC's thriving gay community.

One of my favorite passages is when Sean describes his first time hearing a pennywhistle, feeling the yearning and emotion in that small instrument. As a wannabe whistler myself (I'm not very good but oh how I love playing my whistles), I know exactly what he meant. The author does an excellent job of creating believable, relatable characters without making them out to be over-the-top or unrealistic.

That's not to say that Eliza's story isn't worthwhile. They are both very different, and I found both equally enjoyable. Eliza's story seems incomplete at times, such as never learning what her stepmother was up to exactly or never any follow up with the mysterious fairy or her foster father - granted, most of those were probably put in just to mirror the original fairy tale, but I felt there were loose ends. Her wordless relationship with Jonathan, her eventual husband, smolders while still being clean (this is not a dirty read folks).

There are so many parallels between the two stories, and the transitions between the two stories are so smooth. No jarring switches between narrators here.

It was a 5 star up until the end. It's just too unfinished and unpolished. Eliza just breaks the spell and tells her husband she loves him, boom. Dying Elias has a weird encounter with the redheaded swan lady, has a dream where he asks her what his purpose was, and she just floats away, the end.

Beautifully written retelling

My thanks to Endeavour Media/Endeavour Venture for a digital edition via NetGalley of ‘The Wild Swans’ by Peg Kerr in exchange for an honest review.

‘The Wild Swans’ was originally published in 1999 and was nominated in 2000 for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. In a 1999 review Charles de Lint wrote of it: “among the very best contemporary retellings of fairy tales, those that retain the old charm and magic of the original, but use the classic material to illuminate elements of our life in the real world.”

So after twenty years it has been republished as an ebook. I welcome titles such as this being made available to a new generation of readers as well as to those like myself who missed it first time around.

The narrative moves between two stories set in different time periods. The first is a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Wild Swans’ set in England and New England during the late 17th Century. Lady Eliza Grey is banished from her family home thanks to the machinations of her stepmother. She goes in search of her eleven brothers, who had also been banished, and discovers that they have been cursed. She is granted a way to break the curse though it comes at a high price.

The second tale is set in New York during the early 1980s. Elias Latham has been banished from his father’s house after coming out. For a while he is living on the streets though a chance encounter with street musician Sean introduces him to the local gay community. However, it isn’t long before members of the community are falling prey to a mysterious plague.

At first I wasn’t sure how a historical retelling of a fairy tale focusing on a witch’s curse transforming her victims into swans would work alongside a more contemporary story about the spread of AIDS within the New York 1980s gay scene. Yet I found myself quickly caught up in the challenges faced by Eliza and Elias in their respective settings.

Aside from Eliza and Elias both being outcasts, a link is made between the two tales as Elias mentions in passing a family legend about an ancestor and indeed Eliza does encounter a young Puritan magistrate named Latham in the New World.

There are other subtle connections between the two and the movement between the time periods and between fantasy and realistic fiction flows very organically.

Kerr has written a new foreword to this edition about the changes that have taken place in terms of LGBTQIA rights and the search for a cure for AIDS since she originally wrote the novel. A portion of her profits both then and now have been donated to charities including the AIDS Quilt and The Trevor Project.

Overall, I found this a beautifully written novel that, as de Lint acknowledged, utilised the archetypal power of the original fairy tale to highlight issues in the real world and wove a powerful and moving tale.

The book follows two separate stories: a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale about the twelve brothers turned into swans and their long-suffering sister and rescuer, and a love story set in the beginning years of the HIV epidemic in America. As other reviewed have written, I bought the book for the fairy tale, finished it for the love story, and was ultimately unsatisfied with the connections between them. The author's attempts to create parallelism in plot elements, names, and tone felt clunky and distracting, and I don't feel I really understood the connections she was attempting to make in terms of themes and emotional content. The love story would have made a lovely book on its own.

This is the 10th time I've read this book in the 22 years since it was released and it's still just as moving as it was the first time. This is still my favorite book of all time, so I fail to understand why people wouldn't like it. It's so beautiful and such a moving story.

Kind of heavy-handed with the religion and AIDS themes, but I still liked it and even cried a few times.

I was excited to read this book but didn't get beyond the first few chapters. I stopped when the young man started selling his body to older men. This book flips between two time periods, an older time and the 80's. I was disappointed because I really like the writing.