{"product_id":"2940169455915","title":"A Wild Swan: And Other Tales","description":"\u003cp\u003eFairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Hours\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eA Wild Swan and Other Tales\u003c\/i\u003e, the people and the talismans of lands far, far awayamp;mdash;the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonderamp;mdash;are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRe-imagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eProgram contains music composed specifically for the audio-book by Billy Hough and his bandmates in GarageDogs. Billy Hough says: \"The original piece 'A Wild Swan' was written as a gift to Michael, due to my incredibly strong reaction to hearing these beautiful stories for the first time. I enlisted the brilliant Lili Taylor to alternate the stories with me, and wrote a series of short pieces of music, for their eventual inclusion on this album. I wanted to use the music to illustrate the tension between the ancient and the modern, much in the same way Michael has done in the stories themselves.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA Macmillan Audio production.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Macmillan Audio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47162002571504,"sku":"2940169455915","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940169455915_p0.jpg?v=1763683071","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940169455915","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}