Cygnet

By Season Butler,

Book cover of Cygnet

Book description

Winner of the Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel

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.

“Season Butler has written an imaginative, atmospheric and…


Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Why read it?

1 author picked Cygnet as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

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…