The Crane Husband

Don't you want to fly away?

Probably more of a 3.5 but I'm rounding up.

This is a retelling of the Japanese folktale The Crane Wife and while I couldn't fully recollect what it was about, it is mentioned in this novella too, so that was a good way to refresh my memory. While the original is about greed, this novella deals with grief, loss, generational trauma, domestic abuse, and survival - and does it so marvelously in just 120 pages.

The writing is absolutely magical - very poetic and lyrical, giving it a fairytale feel, even though the content itself is absolutely horrific at times. We knows it's set in the American Midwest but there's not really a clear vision of whether this is the past or some dystopian future, or maybe a combo of the two. But the bleakness of the town, the numbness of drones monitoring the endless farmland, the daily grind of our narrator taking care of everything in her home as well as her mother and little brother while not even bothering about what it's going to her - it all makes for a heartbreaking but resilient tale of a young woman determined to protect her beloved brother and ensure that he is able to escape this cycle of abuse.

I'm not sure I completely understood every metaphor here, and the power of art and transformation while being an integral part here didn't really move me. What I loved was our unnamed narrator's relentless strength and selfless love and the ending was both bittersweet but hopeful. Just go for this short novella if you have some time and want to experience something which is beautifully dark and nightmarish but also full of love.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I recently read The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill, a stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife”, and enjoyed it immensely...

This novella is about a fifteen-year-old teenager who is the backbone of her small Midwestern family. She budgets the household finances and raises her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. Things take an unusual turn when the girl's mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air. Despite her daughter's apprehension, the mother falls in love with the bird and abandons everything around her to weave the masterpiece that the crane demands. The story is beautifully written with metaphors and magical realism woven together seamlessly.

The cover on this book is just gorgeous, as are all of Barnhill's books that I've seen. This was such a melancholy novella but also very powerful. Barnhill tackles heavy subjects such as domestic violence and child neglect through this reimagining of “The Crane Wife”. My only real niggle about the novella is that it is unrelentingly sad. Throughout reading it I wished there had been just a glimpse of happiness for the young lady and her brother. Especially in the end, when we get a glimpse of their future.

Overall, I highly recommend The Crane Husband to anyone looking for a quick but deeply impactful read.

ARC Via NetGalley

This novella feels like something I would've liked to read in my high school AP Lit class or a lit class in college! There's so much to pull out of this story - symbols, motifs, themes - and so many ways to frame the characters and the relationships between the unnamed narrator, Michael, Mom, and Father. The narrator is wise beyond her years and that comes across clearly in this story. This is a quick bite that's unsettling and strange but stays with you - I haven't stopped thinking about it all day! 
As always, I recommend reading the content warnings before picking this up.

This was great!

Chilling and beautifully written.