2020/004: The Wild Swans -- Peg Kerr [reread]
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth2020/004: The Wild Swans -- Peg Kerr [reread]
The story is told in two parallel strands: Eliza, in the 1680s, discovers that her stepmother's changed her eleven brothers into swans; and Elias, in 1980s New York, is learning to live with his sexuality as a gay man, even while his friends are dying of a mysterious illness. Both Elias and Eliza have been disowned by their parents, but find love and friendship elsewhere; both are silent, though silence = death; both find love unexpectedly, though Elias has to endure the lingering death of his lover Sean.
There are other echoes: a man of the cloth questioning his faith; food placed just out of reach; the role of the mother, or the stepmother, in bringing doom to a son; the need to create art in the face of a curse ... And there are hints that the two stories might be connected: that Eliza might be Elias' ancestor, and that another (trans) character might be the reincarnation of someone who deeply regretted her inability to help Eliza. But these are only hints: Kerr has a light touch. She doesn't hammer home the parallels, or sentimentalise either Elias' or Eliza's suffering: nor does she glamourise the gay scene at its brief heyday. Neither protagonist is given to dramatics, but both experience profound emotion. The Wild Swans is a powerful story about love, and hope, and -- to a certain extent -- self-sacrifice.
I read this novel when it was first published in 1999: I haven't reread it since, and recalled very little of the plot, though I did remember the characters and themes. It's aged surprisingly well, and I'm happy that it is now available again, in ebook format, from new publisher Endeavour. (I received a free e-copy from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.) There's also a new foreword by Peg Kerr, which highlights how far we've come in those two decades: not only in treatments for AIDS but in marriage rights.
Read for the 'Either a Favorite or a New-to-You Publisher' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge
It was all there in the background, Elias realized while looking through the album later, like the distant cacophony of traffic on the other side of a closed window. You think you can ignore it, but it keeps getting a little louder, a little closer, irritating at first, and then more and more ominous. There was a kind of anxiety among their friends, even the ones who seemed entirely healthy... [loc 2802]
The story is told in two parallel strands: Eliza, in the 1680s, discovers that her stepmother's changed her eleven brothers into swans; and Elias, in 1980s New York, is learning to live with his sexuality as a gay man, even while his friends are dying of a mysterious illness. Both Elias and Eliza have been disowned by their parents, but find love and friendship elsewhere; both are silent, though silence = death; both find love unexpectedly, though Elias has to endure the lingering death of his lover Sean.
There are other echoes: a man of the cloth questioning his faith; food placed just out of reach; the role of the mother, or the stepmother, in bringing doom to a son; the need to create art in the face of a curse ... And there are hints that the two stories might be connected: that Eliza might be Elias' ancestor, and that another (trans) character might be the reincarnation of someone who deeply regretted her inability to help Eliza. But these are only hints: Kerr has a light touch. She doesn't hammer home the parallels, or sentimentalise either Elias' or Eliza's suffering: nor does she glamourise the gay scene at its brief heyday. Neither protagonist is given to dramatics, but both experience profound emotion. The Wild Swans is a powerful story about love, and hope, and -- to a certain extent -- self-sacrifice.
I read this novel when it was first published in 1999: I haven't reread it since, and recalled very little of the plot, though I did remember the characters and themes. It's aged surprisingly well, and I'm happy that it is now available again, in ebook format, from new publisher Endeavour. (I received a free e-copy from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.) There's also a new foreword by Peg Kerr, which highlights how far we've come in those two decades: not only in treatments for AIDS but in marriage rights.
Read for the 'Either a Favorite or a New-to-You Publisher' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge
