When women were dragons A novel

Kelly Regan Barnhill

Book - 2022

"Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours. But this version of 1950's America is characterized by a significant event: The Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons, left a trail of fiery destruction in their path, and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex's beloved Aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn't know. It's taboo to speak of. Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this disturbing event: a mother more protective than ever; a father growing increasingly distant; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and h...elping to raise a beloved younger girl obsessed with dragons far beyond propriety. In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the forced limitations of girlhood. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small-their lives and their prospects-and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve"--

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FICTION/Barnhill, Kelly
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1st Floor FICTION/Barnhill, Kelly Due Apr 14, 2024
1st Floor FICTION/Barnhill Kelly Due Apr 15, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Fantasy fiction
Bildungsromans
Published
New York : Doubleday [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Kelly Regan Barnhill (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
340 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780385548229
9780593466575
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

On April 25, 1955, 642,987 women transformed spontaneously into dragons--only for the world to turn its back and try to forget it ever happened. Dragons become a taboo topic like menstruation or female orgasm, embarrassing and inappropriate--and most of all, dangerous. In this fantastical satire by acclaimed fantasy author Barnhill (best known for award-winning middle-grade novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon, 2016), Alex Green tries to grow up in a world oppressed by a heavy, carefully enforced silence, a world in which young girls are raised amidst tightly wound limitations and underestimation. And in a fog of her own silence, she finds rage building in her chest. Barnhill's novel and its wild premise expertly satire the patriarchy and its machinations--from the suppression of information to the indoctrination of gender roles. The narrative turns female rage and joy into weapons, all while resisting the rigid gender binaries that gender-focused magic systems can fall prey to. It is infuriating in all the best ways and finds the raw magic within women's determination to break free.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Newbery winner Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) makes her adult debut with a deeply felt exploration of feminism in an alternate fantastical history. Alex Green was a child in Wisconsin in 1955 when over 600,000 American women spontaneously turned into dragons, including her beloved Aunt Marla, and flew away. Alex's mother brings Marla's daughter Beatrice to live with them and, like the rest of American society, refuses to even discuss dragons. Alex grows up adoring her younger cousin, and their close friendship assuages the stress she feels from her mother's pressure to succeed at school, as well as from her chauvinist father. After Alex's mother dies of cancer, her father moves the girls into a tiny apartment where he offers meager financial support and forbids Alex from shopping at the grocery store, afraid people will think he can't provide for them. Determined to get to college, Alex plows through high school with the help of a librarian; she also cautions Beatrice over her "dangerous" attraction to images of angry dragons. Meanwhile, flyers promising the truth about the "Great Dragoning" begin to appear around town, and scientists try to determine the cause of the women's metamorphosis. Barnhill makes palpable Alex's sense of loss as well as the strictures of mid-century American life. This allegory packs a punch. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Barnhill's (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) adult debut is set in a 1950s United States after hundreds of thousands of women transformed into rampaging dragons and then vanished into the skies with other similarly changed women. The book is split into two threads, each performed by a different narrator. Kimberly Farr voices Alex Green, who begins the story as a young girl whose beloved aunt was lost in the Mass Dragoning of 1955. With a timeless storyteller's voice, Farr ably portrays Alex's first-person point of view as she grows up with her cousin Beatrice, moving out of her grim childhood and cautiously gaining a new sense of self. Mark Bramhall narrates interstitial chapters in the form of interviews, articles, and other ephemera that give context to the idea of dragoning. Bramhill's scholarly delivery can feel a bit dry, but his warm tone ensures that listeners will never be bored. VERDICT Listeners will be exhilarated as they see Alex growing from a naïve girl into a woman who abandons the prejudices of her parents and embraces female empowerment.--Matthew Galloway

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

As women around the world inexplicably transform into dragons, a young girl struggles to take care of her cousin in 1950s America. It's indecent to speak about dragons, just as it would be indecent to talk about, say, menstruation or the burning, building rage that so many women feel day to day. Because it's such a forbidden topic, to the extent that scientists who study the dragon transformations are silenced by the government, no one really understands why "dragooning" happens or how it works. When Alex's Aunt Marla is among the thousands of women who all turn into dragons together on the same day in 1955, her beloved cousin, Beatrice, becomes her adopted sister. And when Alex is in high school and her own mother dies of cancer, her father sticks her in a cheap apartment and tells her she's old enough to raise Beatrice on her own. Alex inherited her mother's talent for math and science, and she struggles between her own rage at how her abilities are constantly diminished by the men around her and her resentment that her Aunt Marla became a dragon and abandoned her and Beatrice. But the older Beatrice gets, the more she longs to become a dragon herself, and Alex lives in terror that Beatrice will leave her behind. In lesser hands the dragon metaphor would feel simplistic and general, but Barnhill uses it to imagine different ways of living, loving, and caring for each other. The result is a complex, heartfelt story about following your heart and opening your mind to new possibilities. This novel's magic goes far beyond the dragons. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1. I was four years old when I first met a dragon. I never told my mother. I didn't think she'd understand. (I was wrong, obviously. But I was wrong about a lot of things when it came to her. This is not particularly unusual. I think, perhaps, none of us ever know our mothers, not really. Or at least, not until it's too late.) The day I met a dragon, was, for me, a day of loss, set in a time of instability. My mother had been gone for over two months. My father, whose face had become as empty and expressionless as a hand in a glove, gave me no explanation. My auntie Marla, who had come to stay with us to take care of me while my mother was gone, was similarly blank. Neither spoke of my mother's status or whereabouts. They did not tell me when she would be back. I was a child, and was therefore given no information, no frame of reference, and no means by which I might ask a question. They told me to be a good girl. They hoped I would forget. There was, back then, a little old lady who lived across our alley. She had a garden and a beautiful shed and several chickens who lived in a small coop with a faux owl perched on top. Sometimes, when I wandered into her yard to say hello, she would give me a bundle of carrots. Sometimes she would hand me an egg. Or a cookie. Or a basket full of strawberries. I loved her. She was, for me, the one sensible thing in a too-­often senseless world. She spoke with a heavy accent--­Polish, I learned much later--­and called me her little ż abko, as I was always jumping about like a frog, and then would put me to work picking ground-­cherries or early tomatoes or nasturtiums or sweet peas. And then, after a bit, she would take my hand and walk me home, admonishing my mother (before her disappearance) or my aunt (during those long months of mother-­missing). "You must keep your eyes on this one," she'd scold, "or one day she'll sprout wings and fly away." It was the very end of July when I met the dragon, on an oppressively hot and humid afternoon. One of those days when thunderstorms linger just at the edge of the sky, hulking in raggedy murmurs for hours, waiting to bring in their whirlwinds of opposites--­making the light dark, howling at silences, and wringing all the wetness out of the air like a great, soaked sponge. At this moment, though, the storm had not yet hit, and the whole world simply waited. The air was so damp and warm that it was nearly solid. My scalp sweated into my braids, and my smocked dress had become crinkled with my grubby handprints. I remember the staccato barking of a neighborhood dog. I remember the far-­off rumble of a revving engine. This was likely my aunt, fixing yet another neighbor's car. My aunt was a mechanic, and people said she had magic hands. She could take any broken machine and make it live again. I remember the strange, electric hum of cicadas calling to one another from tree to tree to tree. I remember the floating motes of dust and pollen hanging in the air, glinting in the slant of light. I remember a series of sounds from my neighbor's backyard. A man's roar. A woman's scream. A panicked gasping. A scrabble and a thud. And then, a quiet, awestruck Oh! Each one of these memories is clear and keen as broken glass. I had no means to understand them at the time--­no way to find the link between distinct and seemingly unrelated moments and bits of information. It took years for me to learn how to piece them together. I have stored these memories the way any child stores memory--­a haphazard collection of sharp, bright objects socked away on the darkest shelves in the dustiest corners of our mental filing systems. They stay there, those memories, rattling in the dark. Scratching at the walls. Disrupting our careful ordering of what we think is true. And injuring us when we forget how dangerous they are, and we grasp too hard. I opened the back gate and walked into the old lady's yard, as I had done a hundred times. The chickens were silent. The cicadas stopped humming and the birds stopped calling. The old lady was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there in the center of the yard, I saw a dragon sitting on its bottom, midway between the tomatoes and the shed. It had an astonished expression on its enormous face. It stared at its hands. It stared at its feet. It craned its neck behind itself to get a load of its wings. I didn't cry out. I didn't run away. I didn't even move. I simply stood, rooted to the ground, and stared at the dragon. Finally, because I had come to see the little old lady, and I was nothing if not a purposeful little girl, I cleared my throat and demanded to know where she was. The dragon looked at me, startled. It said nothing. It winked one eye. It held one finger to its lipless jaws as though to say "Shh." And then, without waiting for anything else, it curled its legs under its great body like a spring, tilted its face upward toward the clouds overhead, unfurled its wings, and, with a grunt, pushed the earth away, leaping toward the sky. I watched it ascend higher and higher, eventually arcing westward, disappearing over the wide crowns of the elm trees. I didn't see the little old lady again after that. No one mentioned her. It was as though she never existed. I tried to ask, but I didn't have enough information to even form a question. I looked to the adults in my life to provide reason or reassurance, but found none. Only silence. The little old lady was gone. I saw something that I couldn't understand. There was no space to mention it. Eventually, her house was boarded up and her yard grew over and her garden became a tangled mass. People walked by her house without giving it a second glance. I was four years old when I first saw a dragon. I was four years old when I first learned to be silent about dragons. Perhaps this is how we learn silence--­an absence of words, an absence of context, a hole in the universe where the truth should be. 2. My mother returned to me on a Tuesday. There was, again, no explanation, no reassurance; just a silence on the matter that was cold, heavy, and immovable, like a block of ice frozen to the ground; it was one more thing that was simply unmentionable. It was, if I remember correctly, a little more than two weeks after the old lady across the alley had disappeared. And when her husband, coincidentally, also disappeared. (No one mentioned that, either.) On the day my mother returned, my auntie Marla was in a frenzy, cleaning the house and attacking my face with a hot washcloth, again and again, and brushing my hair obsessively, until it gleamed. I complained, loudly, and tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of her firm grasp. "Come now," my aunt said tersely, "that's enough of that. We want you to look your best, now, don't we?" "What for?" I asked, and I stuck out my tongue. "For no reason at all." Her tone was final--­or she had clearly attempted it to be so. But even as a child I could hear the question mark hiding there. Auntie Marla released me and flushed a bit. She stood and looked out the window. She wrinkled her brow. And then she returned to vacuuming. She polished the chrome accents on the oven and scoured the floor. Every window shone like water. Every surface shimmered like oil. I sat in my room with my dolls (which I did not enjoy) and my blocks (which I did) and pouted. I heard the low rumble of my father's car arriving at our house around lunchtime. This was highly unusual because he never came home during a workday. I approached the window and pressed my nose to the glass, making a singular, round smudge. He curled out of the driver's-side door and adjusted his hat. He patted the smooth curves of the hood as he crossed over and opened the passenger door, his hand extended. Another hand reached out. I held my breath. A stranger stepped out of the car, wearing my mother's clothes. A stranger with a face similar to my mother's, but not--­puffy where it should be delicate, and thin where it should be plump. She was paler than my mother, and her hair was sparse and dull--­all wisps and feathers and bits of scalp peeking out. Her gait was unsteady and halting--­she had none of my mother's footsure stride. I twisted my mouth into a knot. They began walking slowly toward the house, my father and this stranger. My father's right arm curled around her birdlike shoulders and held her body close. His hat sat on his head at a front-­leaning angle, tilted slightly to the side, hiding his face in shadow. I couldn't see his expression. Once they crossed the midpoint of the front walkway, I tore out of my room at a run and arrived, breathless, in the entryway. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand as I watched the door, and waited. My aunt gave a strangled cry and peeled out of the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist, its lace edge whispering against the knees of her dungarees. She threw open the front door and let them inside. I watched the way her cheeks flushed at the sight of this figure in my mother's clothes, the way her eyes reddened and slicked with tears. "Welcome home," my aunt said, her voice catching. She pressed one hand to her mouth, and the other to her heart. I looked at my aunt. I looked at the stranger. I looked at my father. I waited for an explanation, but nothing came. I stamped my foot. They didn't react. Finally, my father cleared his throat. "Alexandra," he said. "It's Alex," I whispered. My father ignored this. "Alexandra, don't stand there gawping. Kiss your mother." He checked his watch. The stranger looked at me. She smiled. Her smile sort of looked like my mother's, but her body was all wrong, and her face was all wrong, and her hair was all wrong, and her smell was all wrong, and the wrongness of the situation felt insurmountable. My knees went wobbly and my head began to pound. I was a serious child in those days--­sober and introspective and not particularly prone to crying or tantrums. But I remember a distinct burning sensation at the back of my eyes. I remember my breath turning into hiccups. I couldn't take a single step. The stranger smiled and swayed, and clutched my father's left arm. He didn't seem to notice. He turned his body slightly away and checked his watch again. Then he gave me a stern look. "Alexandra," he said flatly. "Don't make me ask again. Think of how your mother must feel." My face felt very hot. My aunt was at my side in a moment, sweeping me upward and hoisting me onto her hip, as though I was a baby. "Kisses are better when we can all do them together," she said. "Come on, Alex." And without another word, she hooked one arm around the stranger's waist and placed her cheek against the stranger's cheek, forcing my face right into the notch between the stranger's neck and shoulder. I felt my mother's breath on my scalp. I heard my mother's sigh caress my ear. I ran my fingers along the roomy fabric of her floral dress and curled it into my fist. "Oh," I said, my voice more breath than sound, and I wrapped one arm around the back of the stranger's neck. I don't remember crying. I do remember my mother's scarf and collar and skin becoming wet. I remember the taste of salt. "Well, that's my cue," my father said. "Be a good girl, Alexandra." He extended the sharp point of his chin. "Marla," he nodded at my aunt. "Make sure she lies down," he added. He didn't say anything to the stranger. My mother, I mean. He didn't say anything to my mother. Maybe we were all strangers now. After that day, Auntie Marla continued to come by the house early each morning and stay long after my father came home from work, only returning to her own home after the nighttime dishes were done and the floors were swept and my mother and father were in bed. She cooked and managed and played with me during my mother's endless afternoon lie-­downs. She ran the house, and only went to her job at the mechanic's shop on Saturdays, though this made my father cross, as he had no idea what to do with me, or my mother, for a whole day by himself. "Rent isn't free, after all," she reminded him as my father sat petulantly in his favorite chair. Excerpted from When Women Were Dragons: A Novel by Kelly Barnhill All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.