Review: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
Kelly Barnhill won the World Fantasy Award for her novella The Unlicensed Magician, a Parents Choice Gold Award for Iron Hearted Violet, the Charlotte Huck Honor for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and has been a finalist for a number of awards. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her three children and husband, and works as an author and a teacher.
Her newest book When Women Were Dragons is an incredible story that feels almost like a fairy tale. It deals with trauma and rage, healing and belonging. We highly recommend!
Alex Green sees her first dragon at four years old. Next door, where her neighbour usually sits, there is a huge dragon that opens it wings and flies away. Alex never sees her neighbour again. And no one mentions her again. Like she never existed.
Then Alex’s mother disappears, and reappears a week later, with no explanation. But she covered with scars – wide, deep burns, as though she had been attacked by a monster who breathed fire.
Alex is desperate for answers but she gets none. The Mass Dragoning is coming. Nothing will be the same after that. Everything is about to change, forever. When it does, this, too, will be unmentionable.
This fantastic read is a complex examination of women’s rage in a world that wants to keep them small. Focusing on the self-actualization of a girl as she grows and learns, it has some wonderful homour and themes of womenhood, family, and love. Exploring the inequility and rage that women faced in 1950’s America, Barnhill gives an unflinching exploration into what it means to be a woman in a world that wants to control you and everything you are.
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