A Wild Swan

And Other Tales

By: Michael Cunningham

Narrated by: Lili Taylor, Billy Hough

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 and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away—the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder—are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation.
Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, 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 malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers 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, our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.

Program contains music composed specifically for the audiobook by Billy Hough and his bandmates in GarageDogs. Billy Hough says: "The original piece 'A Wild Swan' was written as a gift to Michael, due to my incredibly strong reaction to hearing these beautiful stories for the first time. I enlisted the brilliant Lili Taylor to alternate the stories with me, and wrote a series of short pieces of music, for their eventual inclusion on this album. I wanted to use the music to illustrate the tension between the ancient and the modern, much in the same way Michael has done in the stories themselves."

Critic reviews

Michael Cunningham writes some of the most beautiful prose in contemporary American fiction. —Wendy Smith, The Daily Beast

Taylor and Hough dramatize these newfangled tales with youthful charm and subtle savagery, easily swinging from the author’s gentle humor into darker recesses. —Publishers Weekly

Over and over, Taylor and Hough offer up the prettiest rose for us to sniff and at just the right moment, let the thorn prick us. Their pacing is immaculate. —AudioFile Magazine, winner of an Earphones Award

“Modern, wicked, dark and accompanied by original music, these are enhanced by the narrators, who veer between charm and ferociousness.”--Cleveland Plain Dealer

Interesting Take on Familiar Tales

The author surprises the listener with his unique renditions of familiar fairy tales. Some have happier endings, many don't, but all are interesting as only a master storyteller could make them. Not a book for children.

fairy tales updated for the modern adult set

there was only one story i didn't love in this collection. really well conceived, clever, sometimes edgy stories that put traditional fairy tale stories on their heads.

loved it.

Darkly fractured fairy tales

These fairy tales aren't just fractured, they're darkly twisted and nearly broken in places. But uniquely so, in a way not seen in other retold fairy tales. I couldn't stand The Hours, but this short story collection examines some of the same themes with far more interesting consequences. The narrators are appropriately expressive, and the GarageDogs' music is seamlessly integrated.

Beautifully Dark

Wildly Dark and unique versions of tales I thought I knew. The Beauty and the Beast story was a personal favorite.

Not what I expected

What disappointed you about A Wild Swan?

It was too crass. I only got through two stories, and just couldn't listen to more.

Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Cunningham again?

Not sure--might sample it.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Wild Swan?

It wasn't the scenes, per se, but the words used. To describe the scenes. I couldn't identify with any of the characters.