A Wild Swan and Other Tales. By Michael Cunningham. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 144 pages; $23. Fourth Estate; £14.99.
ADULTS need their comforts, too. Homemade sponge cake; warm baths; bedtime stories, on occasion. Michael Cunningham’s new collection of fairy tales, “A Wild Swan”, will not launch readers into a relaxed, contented sleep. They are too ominous, observant and wry. Just as traditional fairy tales have always done, these contain complex, pointed storytelling that makes one happy to be a grown-up. This writing is not for innocent eyes.
Mr Cunningham reacquaints readers with old characters, reimagined. His prose brings back much of the original swagger and sharpness. Rumpelstiltskin is not villainous, but a good-hearted gnome who yearns to raise a child. He saves a young woman from death and helps her weave gold from straw, only for her to backtrack on her promise to give him her firstborn when she becomes queen. Jack may have climbed a beanstalk three times, but that is the most exercise he has ever done. He is lazy and greedy, and lives with his mother because she is the only person who will not criticise him.
Mr Cunningham, who teaches creative writing at Yale University, is extremely funny and psychologically observant, but he is no believer in happy endings. “The Hours”, a novel published in 1998 for which he won the Pultizer prize for fiction, examines the impact that Virginia Woolf’s book “Mrs Dalloway” has on three generations of unhappy women.
Love is equally hard to find in “A Wild Swan”. The most moving story from this collection is “Steadfast; Tin”, based on the “The Steadfast Tin Solider”, in which a man with a prosthetic leg and his wife arrive at peace after decades of unhappiness in their marriage. Beautiful, imaginative illustrations by Yuko Shimizu, a Japanese artist based in New York, complement the stories, spurring the feeling that this is not just a book to read, but also a special object.
In recasting these fairy tales Mr Cunningham is returning them to their dark roots. Nineteenth-century stories by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen were dramatic and often tragic—unlike Walt Disney’s later interpretations which were simplistic, joyful animations. In “The Wild Swan” there are no unblemished heroes or princesses, only flawed characters, many of whom never achieve their modest dreams. The worlds that Mr Cunningham so elegantly evokes are just as troubling and disappointing as our own, and that is surprisingly comforting.
This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Duty and the beast"