![]() ![]() ![]() When Elias gets a chance to get off the streets, he quite rightly jumps at it. 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. I have one additional complaint about Elias' story. (Witches were not burned alive in England Catholic priests released from their vows retain the power to perform the sacraments.) On the other hand, each contains an obvious mistake about an easily checked background detail. One story is fantasy the other is mainstream mimetic fiction. One succeeds in defeating the evil that oppresses them the other can only defeat it in spirit. One is severely let down by adopted family every important member of the other's adopted family stands firm. 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. 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". They're both interesting, compelling stories, and I enjoyed both them. ![]() 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. ![]()
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