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Cygnet
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An utterly original coming-of-age tale, marked by wrenching humor and staggering charisma, about a young woman resisting the savagery of adulthood in a community of the elderly rejecting the promise of youth.
“It’s too hot for most of the clothes I packed to come here, when I thought this would only be for a week or two. My mother kissed me with those purple-brown lips of h ...more
“It’s too hot for most of the clothes I packed to come here, when I thought this would only be for a week or two. My mother kissed me with those purple-brown lips of h ...more
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3.5 stars rounded up .
This is an introspective book, a portrait of loneliness, not just the being alone kind of loneliness, but being among people and not wanted. Seventeen year old Kid, that’s what the elderly people on Swan Island call her. She’s the daughter of drug addict parents who leave her with her grandmother on the island where the “Swans” are living out their old age and they don’t much like having her around. When her grandmother dies, she’s left to fend for herself, waiting for her ...more
This is an introspective book, a portrait of loneliness, not just the being alone kind of loneliness, but being among people and not wanted. Seventeen year old Kid, that’s what the elderly people on Swan Island call her. She’s the daughter of drug addict parents who leave her with her grandmother on the island where the “Swans” are living out their old age and they don’t much like having her around. When her grandmother dies, she’s left to fend for herself, waiting for her ...more
Cygnet is a wholly original coming-of-age novel and a great debut which is effectively a meditation on the difficulty faced by teens who are transitioning into adulthood; a feeling we all know personally. Ms Butler explores issues surrounding loneliness, social isolation, bullying, self-confidence, confusion, love, parenting, family relationships, desperation and drug addiction. It's a well-told story which was rather moving as The Kid manoeuvred her way around the dystopian landscape she inhabi
...more
Umm..... what did I just read....?
I am a bit confused by what I just read and I want answers.
Dubbed a coming-of-age novel we meet a seventeen year-old girl who is called Kid by the persons around her. Kid went to live temporarily with her Grandmother on Swan Island off the coast of New Hampshire. Swan Island is home to the Wrinklies as Kid calls them- they moved to Swan Island to be away from the "Bad Place"- that is, the "real world". The Wrinklies all gather on Swan Island to retire and... ...more
I am a bit confused by what I just read and I want answers.
Dubbed a coming-of-age novel we meet a seventeen year-old girl who is called Kid by the persons around her. Kid went to live temporarily with her Grandmother on Swan Island off the coast of New Hampshire. Swan Island is home to the Wrinklies as Kid calls them- they moved to Swan Island to be away from the "Bad Place"- that is, the "real world". The Wrinklies all gather on Swan Island to retire and... ...more
The Isle of Swan is an island in the ocean populated by free spirit hippie type elderly people. The people are called “Wrinklies.” 😂 they are possessive of their island, their territory. They only allow folk from the mainland once a week for business or deliveries and mail. They are into organic/naturals, herbalistics, gardening and pollinators and self care. They pay or barter for goods/services and drugs throughout the island. They have a deli called Psychadelicatessan! The mainland is referre
...more
75th book for 2019.
While I liked the writing in parts, the overall pacing seemed off to me, with very little happening over the course of the book and a final sudden "coming-of-age" of the main character seemingly tacked on at the end. While I found neither the main character nor her flock of elderly tormentors were particularly likeable or interesting this might just be because I am the wrong demographic for this book.
2-stars. ...more
While I liked the writing in parts, the overall pacing seemed off to me, with very little happening over the course of the book and a final sudden "coming-of-age" of the main character seemingly tacked on at the end. While I found neither the main character nor her flock of elderly tormentors were particularly likeable or interesting this might just be because I am the wrong demographic for this book.
2-stars. ...more
(#gifted | @cheltfestivals) Do you ever finish a book and just think... Well I *think* I liked it? When you didn’t love it and you definitely didn’t hate it, and just had a pretty good time reading it overall? Those are the hardest reviews to write for me! Nothing to rant about, nothing to rave about, just a solidly enjoyable read!
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Cygnet had a super interesting premise, which sees our protagonist, seventeen-year-old Kid, left on Swan by her parents, seemingly for just a few short weeks but then ...more
.
Cygnet had a super interesting premise, which sees our protagonist, seventeen-year-old Kid, left on Swan by her parents, seemingly for just a few short weeks but then ...more
This book was a gentle little allegory about the current state of our lives as we all hurtle towards a climate apocalypse. About the kid, a teen who is left by her addicted parents to live with her grandmother temporarily on a self-isolating island of seniors, our protagonist finds herself in a world where she is unwelcome and unwanted, following the death of her grandmother. With little of meaning to do, and no close friends, the kid spends her days trying to mange overwhelming anxiety while al
...more
OK, so this book will NOT be to most people's liking, but I was fascinated by it and deeply appreciative of reading something so unusual.
It's dystopian, yet not.
It's coming of age, yet not.
It's meditative, yet suspenseful.
It's realistic, but bizarrely imaginative.
The story telling spins like a drug trip (appropriate), it stops and starts taking the reader right to the edge, then stepping back from the reveal (also appropriate), it alternates between in-your-face sexual exploration and deeply res ...more
It's dystopian, yet not.
It's coming of age, yet not.
It's meditative, yet suspenseful.
It's realistic, but bizarrely imaginative.
The story telling spins like a drug trip (appropriate), it stops and starts taking the reader right to the edge, then stepping back from the reveal (also appropriate), it alternates between in-your-face sexual exploration and deeply res ...more
Strange, I always confuse the title with signet, but y makes all the difference, the meaning is a baby swan, someone on the brink of becoming a magnificent creature, so you’re going in expecting a coming of age story and that’s what it is. A story of a 17 year old young woman left on an island of old people by her insufficient parents. This story might have been the case of a setting outshining the protagonist. The island is so strange, its population are agists separatists, who want nothing to
...more
I don't know why but I thought this was going to be dystopian. It's not, Swan Island is more like a retirement village for anti-social old people. The Kid being abandoned on the island with them is not what anyone wants.
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Season Butler's writing is lovely and very descriptive. Occasionally there were a few too many adjectives. It's not a book where things happen, it's more introspective, all about love and loneliness and learning to let people go so you can begin to live your own life.
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The sea pl ...more
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Season Butler's writing is lovely and very descriptive. Occasionally there were a few too many adjectives. It's not a book where things happen, it's more introspective, all about love and loneliness and learning to let people go so you can begin to live your own life.
.
The sea pl ...more
Oct 11, 2019
Gerasimos Reads
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
own,
university
This started off with an interesting concept (young girl is abandoned by her parents in a retirement island, inhabited exclusively by old people) and I largely enjoyed parts of it, but it soon became meandering and lost its drive and purpose.
The main character was drawn very inconsistently: one moment she was acting like a ten year old and the next she was acting like a mature adult. I would be willing to accept that this was done as a conscious choice if it didn't feel so sloppy? The writing h ...more
The main character was drawn very inconsistently: one moment she was acting like a ten year old and the next she was acting like a mature adult. I would be willing to accept that this was done as a conscious choice if it didn't feel so sloppy? The writing h ...more
Jan 29, 2021
Jacob Wren
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
kittens-research
Three short passages from Cygnet:
*
Rose always says that we’re all the same age because we’re all the oldest we’ve ever been.
*
I think about the kids that people my age are having, or will start having soon. Life is going to be so boring for them. Not just because the world will have gone completely to shit by then and there won’t be much of anything left, but because their parents are going to talk constantly about how the world used to be. Remember when you could just get in your car if you nee ...more
*
Rose always says that we’re all the same age because we’re all the oldest we’ve ever been.
*
I think about the kids that people my age are having, or will start having soon. Life is going to be so boring for them. Not just because the world will have gone completely to shit by then and there won’t be much of anything left, but because their parents are going to talk constantly about how the world used to be. Remember when you could just get in your car if you nee ...more
This book had it all...great atmosphere, characters and plot. Set on a small island that is disappearing into the sea, The female teen narrator is trying to find her way after being abandoned by family and feeling unwanted among the elderly inhabitants of the island. A coming of age story that shows the progress of growing up and developing internal strength.
A beautifully written coming-of-age narrative that just meandered a bit too much for my tastes.
3.5 Stars
“I like to pretend I’m that character from A Little Princess, working away with a beacon of optimism keeping me going: the storybook knowledge that my daddy will return from whatever war that was, shake off his amnesia, and come for me.”
Cygnet is gloriously weird, surprisingly funny, quirky coming of age story. It’s about a troubled young woman’s struggles after being abandoned by her parents. They left her on an island full of old people who spend their days getting high and living the ...more
“I like to pretend I’m that character from A Little Princess, working away with a beacon of optimism keeping me going: the storybook knowledge that my daddy will return from whatever war that was, shake off his amnesia, and come for me.”
Cygnet is gloriously weird, surprisingly funny, quirky coming of age story. It’s about a troubled young woman’s struggles after being abandoned by her parents. They left her on an island full of old people who spend their days getting high and living the ...more
What an odd book! Don’t get me wrong, it’s good. Season Butler is a hell of a writer. Butler’s diction and syntax throughout the whole novel are compelling and really help to piece together an entire world for the reader to get lost in. And it’s easy to get lost with the Swans and feel out of place while reading about our heroine trying to navigate her time on the island as she’s essentially been abandoned and rejected by just about everyone she knows. Ultimately, I think the novel’s biggest pit
...more
In a world where climate change has wreaked its havoc on much of the world's coastlines, 17 year old Kid finds herself abandoned by her parents on an island community for old people. Her parents said they'd be back, but that was a long time ago, and her elderly hosts are getting sick of her youthful presence.
Told partially in stream of consciousness, partially in flashbacks, but all from the point of view of the hilarious and kindhearted Kid, this book is strange and wonderful. It's a little bi ...more
Told partially in stream of consciousness, partially in flashbacks, but all from the point of view of the hilarious and kindhearted Kid, this book is strange and wonderful. It's a little bi ...more
Just finished reading this one - so my review is pretty fresh. This novel tells the story of a girl that gets transplanted on an island of senior citizens (“swans”) who isolate themselves away from the “bad place” or the mainland of the US. She’s not really welcome to their small community , but she finds a kinda existence in the cast of hilarious characters with their quirks and low tolerance for her youth. There’s a metaphor there wrapped up in the title (cygnet means young swan). The protagon ...more
Thank you NetGalley and Harper for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book. This book was totally unexpected. It was a beautiful meditation on becoming an adult. This book is small but poignant, It covers so many areas in just a small book. It is very dark at times and even has a dystopian feel (though it is not) at times. Really enjoyed this one immensely.
This was a unique coming of age story. I really enjoyed the unnamed narrator, and easily could have read many more pages about her journey.
‘The Bad Place is where we all come from.’
An unnamed 17-year old girl (the Kid) is living on Swan Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. As the book progresses, we learn more about how she came to be there, having been taken into care by her Grandmother Lolly after she had been removed by social services from her parents’ house. Now Lolly is dead, and each day the Kid hopes and expects her parents to come and collect her. The island itself is the home of the ‘Wrinklies’, with the average age of ...more
An unnamed 17-year old girl (the Kid) is living on Swan Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. As the book progresses, we learn more about how she came to be there, having been taken into care by her Grandmother Lolly after she had been removed by social services from her parents’ house. Now Lolly is dead, and each day the Kid hopes and expects her parents to come and collect her. The island itself is the home of the ‘Wrinklies’, with the average age of ...more
Edit: just over a week after reading ‘Cygnet’ it’s theme of a group of over 65s, isolating themselves on Swan Island now seems to be chillingly prophetic. I have amended my rating to reflect this.
My thanks to Little Brown Book Group U.K. /Dialogue Books for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Cygnet’ by Season Butler in exchange for an honest review. It was published in April 2019. My apologies for the late feedback. Its paperback edition will be released on 7 May 2020.
The unnamed seventeen-year-old narr ...more
My thanks to Little Brown Book Group U.K. /Dialogue Books for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Cygnet’ by Season Butler in exchange for an honest review. It was published in April 2019. My apologies for the late feedback. Its paperback edition will be released on 7 May 2020.
The unnamed seventeen-year-old narr ...more
I finished this a while ago, but it lingers in my mind. The paperback version that I read as an ARC (with thanks to the publisher and the author for the copy in exchange for my honest review) came out this week so it semed an apt time to write this.
A very basic overview - We meet Kid on the verge of her eighteenth birthday. She had been discarded by her parents (who provided quite limited parenting) and left in the hands of her grandmother who lives and - before our story opens - dies on an isol ...more
A very basic overview - We meet Kid on the verge of her eighteenth birthday. She had been discarded by her parents (who provided quite limited parenting) and left in the hands of her grandmother who lives and - before our story opens - dies on an isol ...more
A really uneven read, with weird pacing and character construction in what might have been a unique book.
Our nameless narrator (I really never found any deeper meaning behind her having no name) was living with her grandmother on a seniors-only island in New England, because her parents lost custody. The "Wrinklies" on the island had given her grandmother special dispensation to keep her for a few weeks only, but her grandmother has died, and our narrator is overstaying her welcome.
Interesting, ...more
Our nameless narrator (I really never found any deeper meaning behind her having no name) was living with her grandmother on a seniors-only island in New England, because her parents lost custody. The "Wrinklies" on the island had given her grandmother special dispensation to keep her for a few weeks only, but her grandmother has died, and our narrator is overstaying her welcome.
Interesting, ...more
I approached “Cygnet” by Season Butler without any prior knowledge about it. I got it in my Willoughby Book Club subscription – it was chosen based on my favourite genres, but I did not know what books exactly I will get. And I did not read the description of the book. I was open for the book to surprise me.
The beginning of the book was very promising. It was very easy and interesting to read. Main character is a teenager left at the Swan island by her parents to live for some time with her gran ...more
The beginning of the book was very promising. It was very easy and interesting to read. Main character is a teenager left at the Swan island by her parents to live for some time with her gran ...more
Kid is only seventeen, but she feels older than her years--for good reason. Months ago, her parents left her with her grandmother, Lolly, and though Kid keeps hoping they’ll return, they haven’t. When Lolly dies, Kid is all but alone, not just an orphan but the only young person on Swan Island. Swan Island, off the New Hampshire coast, is a kind of utopia for elderly men and women who have opted out of life in the Bad Place--aka the rest of the world--and have formed a separatist society where t
...more
I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.
This coming of age story follows seventeen-year-old Kid who has been left by her parents with her grandmother on a remote island off the coast of New Hampshire called Swan Island. The island is inhabited by a group of anti-social elderly residents who refer to the mainland as 'the Bad Place' and only tolerate Kid's presence, and tolerate it even less after her grandmother dies, leaving Kid alone. Kid desperately hopes that he ...more
This coming of age story follows seventeen-year-old Kid who has been left by her parents with her grandmother on a remote island off the coast of New Hampshire called Swan Island. The island is inhabited by a group of anti-social elderly residents who refer to the mainland as 'the Bad Place' and only tolerate Kid's presence, and tolerate it even less after her grandmother dies, leaving Kid alone. Kid desperately hopes that he ...more
CYGNET, Season Butler, is an intimate look at life and death and everything in between. Narrated by a young woman everyone calls the Kid, the book takes place on a small island inhabited solely by a group of seniors self-titled the Wrinklies. They have all decided to escape the lives they had and start a new ones with the time they have left on earth. Our narrator has been abandoned on the island, called the Swan, right at the moment she is maturing from mature girl to young lady; where she must
...more
HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Cygnet. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.
Seventeen year old Kid was left with her Grandma Lolly by her parents, who promised to return when they got their lives under control. Months later, her parents are no where to be found and her grandmother has passed away. Stranded on Swan Island at her grandmother's house, Kid does whatever it takes to make ends meet and keep a roof o ...more
Seventeen year old Kid was left with her Grandma Lolly by her parents, who promised to return when they got their lives under control. Months later, her parents are no where to be found and her grandmother has passed away. Stranded on Swan Island at her grandmother's house, Kid does whatever it takes to make ends meet and keep a roof o ...more
A seventeen year old girl has been abandoned by her parents. They’ve left her on an island in the Atlantic with her grandmother. It was supposed to be maybe only a week, but the seasons have changed over and they aren’t coming back. Grandma has died and the bluff that makes up the back yard to her island house is eroding into the ocean. The girl is living alone, on an island composed solely of the elderly, trying to pay rent by editing photos for $5 an hour as she waits to be collected by addict
...more
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Season Butler is a writer and artist born in Washington, DC. Season also works as a dramaturg, and as a lecturer in Performance Studies and Creative Writing. An early draft of her debut novel, Cygnet, was shortlisted for the 2014 SI Leeds Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women. She lives and works between London and Berlin.
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