The Summer of the Swans

I re-read The Summer of the Swans this week for the same reason I read The Midwife's Apprentice: to decide whether to keep it. There wasn't anything in the book that I found very interesting, but I think the story I'm about to tell is. I looked through my old book lists to find out when I read The Summer of the Swans the first (and only other) time. The date was August 24, 1996, exactly 5 days before I read The Midwife's Apprentice for the first and only time until this week. And this would not be a coincidence if they had won the John Newbery medal the same year or even in consecutive years, but Swans was the 1971 medal winner and Apprentice was the 1996 medalist. So they won the award 25 years apart and I read them both the same week in 1996 and haven't opened either of them again until I re-read them both this week in 2017, 21 years later.

If you did not find that coincidence story to be interesting I totally understand, but I would also definitely advise you not to read The Summer of the Swans which I can assure is a lot less interesting.