Cygnet: A Novel

"Cygnet" by Season Butler, published by Harper. 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. ELLE ' ONES TO WATCH 2019' 'Terribly moving. A clear-sighted, poignant rumination on loneliness, love, the melancholy of age and of youth' China Mieville 'An imaginative, atmospheric and original novel that lingers in the memory long after reading' Bernadine Evaristo 'A sad, funny, highly original novel' Blake Morrison 'Wholeheartedly enjoy(able)' Lauren Wilkinson, The Millions “ Cygnet is a beautiful book, a meander through the fluid anxiety of youth, an observation of fixed imperfections of age, and a longing search for compassion on the journey between.” —Uzodinma Iweala, author of Speak No Evil and Beasts of No Nation Coming-of-age fiction is a well-established genre but I doubt there's ever been a novel in which the narrator turns 18 on an island exclusively occupied by oldsters. And not since Holden Caulfield have I been so captivated by a first-person voice as the one Season Butler creates in Cygnet : 'kiddo' or 'small-fry' as the Wrinklies call her is super-bright but also naive, tough-minded but also vulnerable, self-reliant but also adrift. How long will she remain on the island? How long will the island itself remain, increasingly eroded by the ocean as it is? Will her parents arrive in time to celebrate her birthday? We don't know, but this sad, funny, highly original novel keeps us turning the pages to find out (Blake Morrison, Author of Things my Mother Never Told Me ) Season Butler is an extraordinary writer. In this wonderful novel the narrative voice is rhythmic and compelling, telling a coming of age story which resonates with our times. Like Colson Whitehead, her work is fearless in its inventiveness. I've always thought Season was the real deal, this book proves that she has arrived (Julia Bell, Author, The Dark Light ) Season Butler has written an imaginative, atmospheric and original novel that lingers in the memory long after reading . . . A bright new voice in literature (Bernadine Evaristo) An original novel with a memorable narrator ( Elle (Eight Books to Devour)) An uncanny meditation on mortality and intergenerational distrust ( Metro ) [A] potent debut . . . A strange, promising beginning ( Observer ) “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 hers and said, we’ll be back, hold tight.” The seventeen-year-old Kid doesn’t know where her parents are. They left her with her grandmother Lolly, promising to return soon. That was months ago. Now Lolly is dead and the Kid is alone, stranded ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire on tiny Swan Island. Unable to reach her parents and with no other relatives to turn to, she works for a neighbor, airbrushing the past by digitally retouching family photos and movies to earn enough money to survive. Surrounded by the vast ocean, the Kid’s temporary home is no ordinary vacation retreat. The island is populated by an idiosyncratic group of the elderly who call themselves Wrinklies. They have left behind the youth-obsessed mainland—“the Bad Place”—to create their own alternative community, one where only the elderly are welcome. The adolescent’s presence on their island oasis unnerves the Wrinklies, turning some downright hostile. They don’t care if she has nowhere to go;they just want her gone. She is a reminder of all they’ve left behind and are determined to forget. But the Kid isn’t the only problem threatening the insular community. Swan Island is eroding into the rising sea, threatening the Wrinklies’ very existence there. The Kid’s own house edges closer to the seaside cliffs each day. To find a way forward, she must come to terms with the realities of her life, the inevitability of loss, and an unknown future that is hers alone to embrace. Season Butler makes her literary debut with an ambitious work of bold imagination. Tough and tender, compassionate and ferocious, understated and provocative, Cygnet is a meditation on death and life, past and future, aging and youth, memory and forgetting, that explores what it means to find acceptance—of things gone and of those yet to come. 256 pages Publisher: Dialogue Books (26 Mar. 2019) ASIN: B07D6RS2C2 Book details: published 2019. Order now on BookShops.in with fast, reliable delivery across India.