Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

Sto caricando le informazioni...

The Wild Swans (1999)

di Peg Kerr

Altri autori: Vedi la sezione altri autori.

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
2585102,625 (3.89)102
Two parallel stories, centuries apart, on people persecuted for their differences. In the present the victim is a homosexual youth, while in the 17th century it is a woman who is accused of being a witch.
  1. 10
    Dancer from the Dance. O Corpo governato dalla musica di Andrew Holleran (amberwitch)
    amberwitch: Wild Swans contain a fairy tale retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson story "The Wild Swans". Entwined with this, but only tangentially related, is the coming of age story of a gay youth in New York. This is the aftermath of the wild 70'es described in Dancer from the Dance.… (altro)
  2. 00
    Glint di Ann Coburn (infiniteletters)
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

» Vedi le 102 citazioni

Mostra 5 di 5
I first read this book in high school. It's now been over two decades. I've re-read it since that first time, but have not in a really long time. I was scared, most likely, with how it will hold up. I shouldn't have worried because I still loved it. Kerr weaves two very different stories together - one a retelling of The Wild Swans fairy tale; the story of a young gay man during the beginning of the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

Both have themes of finding your place in the world and your home. And also about the importance of one's voice. Eliza couldn't speak while she was weaving her brother's coats. Elias had to find his voice. There's the implication that Elias and others in his story are reincarnations of those in Eliza's. Which is at once both a subtle stretch, but also especially poignant when you realize who are connected to who.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. ( )
  wisemetis | Dec 6, 2020 |
Kerr tells two stories in alternating chapters, the story of Eliza, in the seventeenth century, whose stepmother has enchanted her eleven brothers so that they are swans by day and men only by night, and the story of Elias, in the early eighties in New York, whose parents have kicked him out. They're both interesting, compelling stories, and I enjoyed both them. I don't, though, see the close parallels between them that Kerr says in an afterword motivated her, beyond a rather tenuous theme of "what's family". The motivations of the parental units are different, their actions are different, the responses of Eliza and Elias are different, and the outcomes are different. One is severely let down by adopted family; every important member of the other's adopted family stands firm. One succeeds in defeating the evil that oppresses them; the other can only defeat it in spirit. One story is fantasy; the other is mainstream mimetic fiction.

On the other hand, each contains an obvious mistake about an easily checked background detail. (Witches were not burned alive in England; Catholic priests released from their vows retain the power to perform the sacraments.)

I have one additional complaint about Elias' story. There's someone at the beginning who helps him survive his first days on the streets, and tries to teach him survival skills for living in the streets. When Elias gets a chance to get off the streets, he quite rightly jumps at it. From the point of view of that first person to befriend him, though, he must have seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, in circumstances where his having gotten killed would not be out of the question. When Eliza walks away from the people who know her, some of whom care about her, she has a compelling reason for not attempting any contact with them again, at least until after the end of the story. Elias, though, had some options for at least attempting to get word to his street friend that he didn't die bleeding in an alley, even if he didn't want to make direct contact--a personal ad, for instance. As far as the reader can tell from the text of the story, though, Elias never thinks about that person again, once his luck changes.

But I repeat that these are both good stories, and I enjoyed both of them. Kerr does a good job of making the reader care about each of her protagonists, and the problems that confront them. ( )
  LisCarey | Sep 19, 2018 |
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. ( )
  aulsmith | May 10, 2013 |
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. ( )
  the1butterfly | Nov 1, 2007 |
Mostra 5 di 5
nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione

» Aggiungi altri autori (1 potenziale)

Nome dell'autoreRuoloTipo di autoreOpera?Stato
Peg Kerrautore primariotutte le edizionicalcolato
Palencar, John JudeImmagine di copertinaautore secondarioalcune edizioniconfermato

È una rivisitazione di

Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Luoghi significativi
Eventi significativi
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
For Kij Johnson, who teaches me grace.
Incipit
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Elias lay huddled in a ball under a dirty pink blanket in a corner of an abandoned warehouse, dreaming of swans.
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
(Click per vedere. Attenzione: può contenere anticipazioni.)
Nota di disambiguazione
Redattore editoriale
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese

Nessuno

Two parallel stories, centuries apart, on people persecuted for their differences. In the present the victim is a homosexual youth, while in the 17th century it is a woman who is accused of being a witch.

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (3.89)
0.5 1
1 1
1.5
2 2
2.5
3 9
3.5 4
4 19
4.5 5
5 13

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

Hachette Book Group

2 edizioni di questo libro sono state pubblicate da Hachette Book Group.

Edizioni: 0446673668, 0446608475

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 203,198,361 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile