DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
While it may, initially, seem a strange choice to cast an older man as the narrator of a winter-themed fantasy featuring a teenage girl, John McDonough ably delivers Maguire’s reimagined Hans Christian Andersen tale. The plot, while absurd, is rather simple: How will the misfit main character sneak a goose-boy out of her grandparents’ house, bustling as it is with holiday preparations, and send him back to whence he came? Somehow, with McDonough at the helm, the listener is able to suspend disbelief enough to avoid fixating on pesky plot holes and instead enjoy a masterful performance from a voice actor who—whether he meant to or not—comes off as a wry Saint Nick. This is a welcome winter listen. G.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
08/10/2020
Maguire (Wicked) continues his fabulist fairy tale remixes with this enchanting story, which draws inspiration from the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Wild Swans.” In the original, a sister saves her seven brothers from the curse of living as swans by sewing them magical shirts; one brother’s shirt isn’t quite finished, and he ends up with a swan wing instead of an arm. Maguire brings this tale to New York City in 1962, where 15-year-old Laura Ciardi is preparing for an important Christmas Eve dinner in the brownstone where she lives with her Italian immigrant grandparents. Between troubles at school, the looming dread of attending a new boarding school in Canada, the expectations of her grandparents, and worries about her absent mother, Laura doesn’t really have time to deal with the boy who crash lands in her bedroom with one huge swan wing for a left arm. But this new challenge turns out to be exactly what Laura needs to find courage to begin moving forward in her own life. Maguire parallels the swan boy’s story of brokenness to Laura’s own struggles overcoming class and cultural differences. Fans of Maguire’s retellings will love this simple, elegant story. (Oct.)Correction: The publisher listed on a previous version of this review was incorrect.
From the Publisher
Maguire (Wicked) continues his fabulist fairy tale remixes with this enchanting story, . . . Maguire parallels the swan boy’s story of brokenness to Laura’s own struggles overcoming class and cultural differences. Fans of Maguire’s retellings will love this simple, elegant story.” — Publishers Weekly
“As Maguire has so often done before with books like Wicked and Mirror Mirror, A Wild Winter Swan is a delight of fantasy and the grotesquely beautiful in all of us.” — San Francisco Book Review
“A comical, entertaining, heartfelt, and rare story, A Wild Winter Swan is the highbrow fairy tale your fall yearns for.” — Shondaland
“Maguire, whose gift for transforming children’s stories is most famously on display in Wicked, works his magic once again with this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale 'The Wild Swans.' An enchanting, tender, often funny coming-of-age story whose perceptive truths about the human condition surprise and delight.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“This is a novel that is meant to be read in a book nook with thick socks and a winter sweater. It is a very comfortable read, where moments of stress and sadness bloom into scenes of real mystery and beauty . . . A Wild Winter Swan is unlike anything I have read in a long time—in its intimacy, simplicity and welcoming solace.” — Bookreporter.com
“Sensitive depictions of generational and coming-of-age conflicts intertwine with whimsy as Maguire touchingly shows how people invoke stories to help elucidate their complicated world.” — Booklist
“In a masterful meld of fantasy, longing, and troublesome relationships, Maguire’s A Wild Winter Swan shows us, and its young protagonist, that heartfelt connections with other people—and with animals—can lay for us a bridge between life’s sorrows and its wonder.” — Historical Novel Society
“Gregory Maguire still has the magic touch . . . Maguire tells Laura’s story in lush prose, laced with humor and poignancy, weaving the fabulous into the quotidian world. It’s a spell you’ll be happy to have cast upon you.” — Tampa Bay Times
Historical Novel Society
In a masterful meld of fantasy, longing, and troublesome relationships, Maguire’s A Wild Winter Swan shows us, and its young protagonist, that heartfelt connections with other people—and with animals—can lay for us a bridge between life’s sorrows and its wonder.
Booklist
Sensitive depictions of generational and coming-of-age conflicts intertwine with whimsy as Maguire touchingly shows how people invoke stories to help elucidate their complicated world.
Tampa Bay Times
Gregory Maguire still has the magic touch . . . Maguire tells Laura’s story in lush prose, laced with humor and poignancy, weaving the fabulous into the quotidian world. It’s a spell you’ll be happy to have cast upon you.
San Francisco Book Review
As Maguire has so often done before with books like Wicked and Mirror Mirror, A Wild Winter Swan is a delight of fantasy and the grotesquely beautiful in all of us.
Shondaland
A comical, entertaining, heartfelt, and rare story, A Wild Winter Swan is the highbrow fairy tale your fall yearns for.
Bookreporter.com
This is a novel that is meant to be read in a book nook with thick socks and a winter sweater. It is a very comfortable read, where moments of stress and sadness bloom into scenes of real mystery and beauty . . . A Wild Winter Swan is unlike anything I have read in a long time—in its intimacy, simplicity and welcoming solace.
Booklist
Sensitive depictions of generational and coming-of-age conflicts intertwine with whimsy as Maguire touchingly shows how people invoke stories to help elucidate their complicated world.
Library Journal
05/01/2020
After Oz, Wonderland, and the swirling worlds of Dickensian London and E.T.A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker, Maguire transfigures Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wild Swans," here retold as the story of an Italian American girl named Laura living with her starchy grandparents on Manhattan's Upper East Side in the 1960s. As she frets that she will be sent to boarding school after Christmas, a handsome boy with one swan wing appears on her roof. With a 100,000-copy first printing.
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
While it may, initially, seem a strange choice to cast an older man as the narrator of a winter-themed fantasy featuring a teenage girl, John McDonough ably delivers Maguire’s reimagined Hans Christian Andersen tale. The plot, while absurd, is rather simple: How will the misfit main character sneak a goose-boy out of her grandparents’ house, bustling as it is with holiday preparations, and send him back to whence he came? Somehow, with McDonough at the helm, the listener is able to suspend disbelief enough to avoid fixating on pesky plot holes and instead enjoy a masterful performance from a voice actor who—whether he meant to or not—comes off as a wry Saint Nick. This is a welcome winter listen. G.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
