The Wild Swans (1999)

This is one of those AIDS books which was written as if all gay men would get AIDS, all sex is bad and dangerous, and nothing would ever be done about the disease. Since it was published in 1999, long after safe sex campaigns and new drugs were around, the author should have known better. I really disliked this book. ( )

I much preferred the modern story of Elias to that of puritan New England Eliza.

Eliza's half of the story just fell a bit flat for me. I just didn't feel I knew her and the people around her as well as I should. The typical fairy tale ending at the end of her part feels forced because of it. I know I certainly wouldn't immediately forgive someone who came minutes from hanging me!

However, what Eliza's story was good at was drawing attention to the bits of Elias's story that were thematically important. While the stories were completely independent in plot (other than a few hints of reincarnation),the shared threads did link them together sufficiently.

Linking the stories reinforced the idea of hiding -living radically different and completely separate lives by night as you do by day, the idea of persecution by people not quite the same as you, and that of silence - a lack of talking that makes situations worse.

While it's not the best written book by any means, it brings up some thought provoking topics, and I found the modern half of the story very touching. ( )

Not-quite-parallel, but related stories set 300 years apart, tell the stories of two young people who may or may not be related by blood but are definitely related by misfortune. "The Wild Swans" is partly a reworking of Hans Christian Anderson's fairytale about a girl who must save her brothers from a spell which has turned them into swans, and partly a tale of a young man rejected by his family because he's gay. It's a remarkably apt connection to have made because the message of the AIDS activists - Silence = Death - is so important to both stories. There are many points at which the stories can and do meet, but one of the most elegant is the idea of the weaving of the nettles (for which, substitute grief and memory) into the shirts (read the AIDS quilt) which will release the swan-men from their enchantment (a symbolic gesture of solidarity and support for AIDS victims and AIDS research.) Without beating her readers over the head with a message, Kerr manages to express all the most important ideas and emotions in a graceful narrative that has moments of remarkable beauty. Highly recommended. ( )

The Wild Swans is a retelling of the fairy tale with the same name. It features a very practical "princess" (in this version, an earl's daughter), who is very religious, full of common sense, and a practical hardworker. She ends up being flown to the new world by her brothers, and the tail is a wonderful fleshing out of the original fairy tale. It is a great story, but I found myself initially more compelled by the second story that happened at the same time. At eighteen, a boy is kicked out of his home after his waspish family discovers he's gay. He ends up on the streets of New York City, but is saved by a man who goes on to become his lover. He finds his place in the gay community, but in the early 1980s the gay community suffered its own curse- AIDS. I've never felt connected to the fight against AIDS, but this book brought me that connection in a very powerful way. The two stories connect to one another and play off each other in their alternating chapters, and the character names meet in ways that pull the stories together and suggest reincarnation. It takes a lot of strength to fight a curse, and you are not always the one to find success. ( )