Will I love Cygnet?

This extremely lovely, and poetic novel was written by Season Butler, who is a young black woman. She's American but lives in Berlin, when she is not in the states. A Cygnet is a baby swan, for anyone who wants to know. This novel details the life of a young woman, a teenager, who lives with her mother on a remote island, meant only for retired people. She is abandoned by both her parents, who swear they will come back for her, but don't. Her parents are kind of an oddball pair, hippies of a sort, who raise her to… show more.

By far, THIS book is my favorite read of 2024. This is one of the most wholly original and inventive books I’ve ever read. It is described as a “coming of age” book, but I think it’s far more than that. Far more. It is a novel about loneliness, about loss and the heartbreak of being abandoned by those people you trust the most - your parents. 

The prose of Cygnet reminds me of Rene Denfeld’s lovely novel, The Enchanted, and Monica Drake’s book Clown Girl. It has that level of surprise and inventiveness and equal measures of an unspoken… show more.