A Wild Swan: And Other Tales by Michael Cunningham - 2015

Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Near Fine. 6.38 x 0.7 x 8.49 inches. Hardcover. 2015. 144 pages. <br>Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize- winning author of The Hours A poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan a nd Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far aw aythe mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonderare transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories o f sublime revelation. Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is brok en, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malforme d little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disa strous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefer s living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans. Reimagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, and exquisitel y illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, rarely have our bedtime stories be en this dark, this perverse, or this true. Editorial Reviews Re view Delicious, shivery, sophisticated fairy stories as spat fro m the pen of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. 'Most of us are saf e,' Cunningham writes in his astonishing preface. 'If you're not a delirious dream the gods are having, if your beauty doesn't tro uble the constellations, nobody's going to cast a spell on you.' But Cunningham will, and does. In a market oversaturated by rewor ked fairy tales, his are the best. Katy Waldman, Slate [A Wild S wan is] positively delectable. I had no idea Mr. Cunningham had i t in him . . . He can't help but write movingly, even as he's set ting fire to our most cherished childhood texts. The book is stud ded with unexpected moments of grace. Jennifer Senior, The New Yo rk Times Five out of five stars. While there was darkness in the original tales--blood, butchery and much else--Cunningham's coll ection brings emotional light and shade where there was none . . . The comedy in these stories works brilliantly, but it does not uncut the tragedy of its lonely and quietly tormented outsiders . . . These tales, short, contemporary, disturbing, and alluring, would make perfect vending-machine fodder: a transporting and ent hralling read all the way home. Arifa Akbar, The Independent Mic hael Cunningham and Yuko Shimizu's A Wild Swan is an enchantment. Alissa Schappell, Vanity Fair [Cunningham] has reimagined, and wickedly modernized, a batch of fairy tales (Yuko Shimizu's illus trations resemble the work of Aubrey Beardsley.) . . . Readers wi ll savor Cunningham's wise, generous musings about (superbly) rec ognizable types. Joan Frank, San Francisco Chronicle 'I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters,' [Virginia] Woolf wrote in the diary entry Cunningham used as an epigraph to The Hours: 'I t hink that's exactly what I want: humanity, humor, depth.' Cunning ham has performed a similar operation on the 10 tales he has sele cted for transformation . . . For the stories in A Wild Swan, Cun ningham has dug out caves of humanity, humor and depth behind som e well-known characters. Christopher Benfey, The New York Times B ook Review A rollicking and memorable tribute to stories we know .. . . [Cunningham's] prose brings back much of the original swag ger and sharpness. . . . [He] is extremely funny and psychologica lly observant. . . . Beautiful, imaginative illustrations by Yuko Shimizu, complement the stories, spurring the feeling that this is not just a book to read, but also a special object. The Econom ist Remixing myths and fairy tales in this new collection - beau tifully illustrated by Yuko Shimizu - Cunningham stands magic on its head. . . . Cunningham never condescends to his characters. I nstead, he inhabits them. Kit Reed, Miami Herald The original ta les are timeless for good reasons, and by approaching them from a fresh and astute perspective with humor and compassion, Cunningh am revitalizes their profound resonance. Imaginatively illustrate d by Yuko Shimizu, this is a dazzling twenty-first-century fairy- tale collection of creative verve and keen enchantment. Cunningha m's high stature and the book's irresistible premise will attract lively media attention and reader curiosity. Donna Seaman, Bookl ist The latest from Cunningham (The Snow Queen) offers elegant, sardonic retellings of 10 iconic fairy tales . . . Cunningham's t ales enlarge rather than reduce the haunting mystery of their ori ginals. Striking black-and-white images from illustrator Shimizu add a fitting visual counterpoint to a collection at once dark an d delightful. Publishers Weekly About the Author MICHAEL CUNNING HAM is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, F lesh and Blood, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Snow Queen, as well as the collection A Wild Swan and Other Tales, and the no nfiction book Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. He is the recip ient of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has appeared in The New Yorkerand The Best American Short Storie s. The Hours was a New York Times bestseller, and the winner of b oth the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Raised in Los Angeles, Michael Cunningham lives in New York City, and is a seni or lecturer at Yale University. Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese illus trator based in New York, whose work has been featured in Time, N ewsweek, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her first self-t itled monograph was released from Gestalten in 2011; her first ch ildren's book illustrations appeared in Barbed Wire Baseball, wri tten by Marissa Moss. Shimizu teaches illustration at the School of Visual Arts. .