by Kelly Barnhill
Holy hell, what a book! It’s unique, creative, powerful, heart wrenching, fascinating, historical, fantastical, and timely. And long! It takes place in the 1950s – during McCarthyism – and is an allegory for women’s frustration and anger at being stifled and dismissed, with all their brilliance and unappreciated potential squirreled away and trapped in thankless marriages and gender roles. The overall message is that women are imprisoned by society and have no rights, and their only choice is to abandon their human form and leave society, at least until there is an overdue reckoning and society changes.
This larger message is set against the backdrop of a coming-of-age story about a young girl, who is both witness to, and participant in, the mass dragoning of women and the cover up of it by society. It’s a love letter to liberation, transformation, otherness, and authenticity. And, of course, it’s a book about dragons.
It hit me hard how timely this novel is right now in December 2024 with regard to women’s rights. How far we’ve come, only to backslide. How much progress still has to happen. And how we seem to be unable to learn from our past trauma as a society and world. Let’s hope that changes. Or that women can dragon!
The author says in her author’s note: “I thought I was writing a story about rage. I wasn’t. There is certainly rage in this novel, but it is about more than that. In its heart, this is a story about memory, and trauma. It’s about the damage we do to ourselves and our community when we refuse to talk about the past. It’s about the memories that we don’t understand, and can’t put into context, until we learn more about the world.”
