A Wild Winter Swan

 ‘'The loneliness she felt was so keen it was almost elegant. It cut her. Every snowflake on her bare arms had steel blades.There was no future and no past in such immediate pain.''

I haven't read Wicked, I couldn't care less about trash with singing witches (green-faced or otherwise...) but I have read Egg & Spoon (a brilliant folktale about the Baba Yaga and Imperial Russia) and I loved it. A Wild Winter Swan is a tale set in New York during the 60s, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Wild Swans and for the most part, it is a novel that attracts the reader's attention but fails to do justice to Andersen's masterpiece.

‘'No one stood nearby to look down at the girl in the bed and witness whether or not she really existed.''

Laura lives in an upper-class New York neighbourhood under the protection of her grandparents. A troubled teenager who can't seem to fit even in the city of diversity and confusion, unable to cope with school, afraid and unwilling to warm up to people. Before an important Christmas dinner, a strange boy lands on her window. A boy with one hand and one broken wing.

The setting is beautiful. New York in all its Christmas glory, its wintry spirit depicted in poetic, achingly moving paragraphs. This is not enough, I'm afraid. Through Laura's eyes the world is bleak and the focus of the story shifts towards the struggles of the immigrants, Italians and Irish, and the tale itself becomes a mere vehicle. Despite the writer's efforts to add a certain folksy atmosphere, the absence of a compelling cast of characters, the dialogue that leaves a lot to be desired and the fact that the folk tales itself doesn't shine make this retelling a rather forgettable effort, in my opinion.

Some folk tales are better left untouched.