Stopping in mid-flight with A Wild Winter Swan
By: Jasmin James
Tags: Fairy Tale, Christmas, Fantasy, Reading, Books

Stopping in mid-flight with A Wild Winter Swan

Gregory Maguire’s newest fairy tale revision is rich in atmosphere but poor in plot

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As the brain behind the original story that inspired hit Broadway musical Wicked, Gregory Maguire is celebrated as a storyteller with clout when it comes on putting a new spin on beloved fairy tales. Yet the famed magic touch of the writer of the Nutcracker retelling Hiddensee seems somewhat lacking in his newest novel. Described by Maguire himself as ‘comfort food during the pandemic’, it follows that description to a T- a wholesome yet not engrossing read.

Following the fate of 15-year old Laura Ciardi who grows up in the 1960’s version of New York’s Upper East Side, it’s a modern re-imaging of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s lesser known fairytales, The Wild Swans. The original story describes how a clever princess manages to lift a curse on her eleven brothers who have been turned into swans by an evil sorceress by knitting flaxen shirts for them. The tale ends happily, the only oddity being that the youngest brother ends up stuck with a swan’s wing because his sister runs out of yarn when making the arm of his shirt.

Imagine that same young boy crash-landing into the window of an adolescent girl and the shenanigans that may cause and you pretty much have the gist of A Wild Winter Swan.

As a premise, it’s promising yet the author fails to deliver on that account.

Laura as a protagonist is your typical moody teenager, struggling with mean girls and bullying at school, reeling from the loss of an absent mother and a complicated family history as well as the inevitable generational struggle of living under the roof of her well-meaning yet in some ways conservative wealthy Italian immigrant grandparents. There is much scope here for an investigation of class differences as well as gender roles yet in Laura we have a heroine who comes across as more of an All-American brat rather than the lonely and misunderstood girl she is supposed to represent. Correct me if I’m wrong, but living in an affluent home with family willing to pay one’s way into a cushy boarding school and willing to give you the space needed (a separate bathroom!), with understanding to spare for emotional pain endured is not something to sniff one’s nose at. (As someone who grew up as the daughter of immigrant parents, I can only wonder at yet another brand of entitlement and white privilege.)

Instead we see a girl so caught up in perceived wrongs ‘done to her’, both by family as well as school colleagues that there is little room for exploration of other minds or relationships.

That’s unfortunate, considering that the cast of surrounding characters, especially her Grandmother (‘Nonna’), have much more to say than they are given room for.

The age-old immigrant story of failure and success, of rising above oneself and building something from scratch does not fail to attract when we see the interactions of Laura’s grandparents with everyone ranging from their employees to direct famile-people with a nouveau rich mindset but simultaneously attached to their Italian heritage. In the course of elaborate meal preparations for a penultimate Italian themed Christmas dinner that will make or break the Ciardi’s who are hoping to wine and dine a lucrative investor, A Wild Winter Swan expounds on the most interesting passage to date.

Laura’s grandmother explains how Christmas used to be like when she was growing up and it sheds light on her slightly acerbic character in the present.

Back in those broke-tooth days, who had the means to offer even one fish on Christmas Eve? Not us, cara mia. But for weeks we saved all our bread crumbs in a clay pot, so we could scatter the tablecloth with them. Waiting until people were walking to church at midnight past our house, my mama would flap the tablecloth out the window in the moonlight, making the crumbs sparkle like this damn snow, to prove we had so much to serve we couldn’t even finish the crumbs.

Laura’s answer to that speech? She ‘stifles a yawn’ and proclaims ‘that it’s ridiculous to gorge oneself on seven kinds of fish in one meal when one ‘scrounged for bread crumbs in Italy’. A teenager can’t be expected to understand the ins and outs of family pride and the need to showcase that one ‘has made it’ but for someone portrayed as a loner who throughout the story delivers little imagined paragraphs of fiction, paraphrasing her life in prose, this level of understanding comes across as somewhat shocking.

If nothing else, her lackadaisical manner provides the reader with a rather glorious defence for capitalist greed and the need for showcasing splendour to relative strangers.