Book Review Tuesday (11/14/23) – The Crane Husband

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Brief rant: don’t you love it when Goodreads posts the nominees for the “YA Fantasy & Science Fiction” category and…there’s no science fiction books on the list? Not a single one? Thank you Goodreads 🥰

It’s been years since I’ve read anything by Kelly Barnhill; I read a fair amount of her middle-grade novels when I was younger, and there were hits (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) and misses (Iron-Hearted Violet). But either way, the road has taken me back to her adult novella, a chilling retelling of “The Crane Wife” that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Enjoy this week’s book review!

The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill

In a distant future, a fifteen-year-old girl lives on one of the few remaining farms in the United States, growing cloned crops in order to make a living. Her father passed away when she was young, and now she manages the farm with her mother and takes care of her six-year-old brother, Michael. But when her mother brings home a new suitor, the girl is appalled to find that the suitor happens to be a giant crane—a crane intent on working her mother to the bone in order to produce tapestries to sell. As her mother succumbs to the wills of the crane and her family grows poorer, the girl knows that the only way out is to rid the house of the crane—and she’ll do anything to make sure the bird is out of the farm.

TW/CW: death of a parent, blood, abuse, animal death, child endangerment

It’s been at least seven or eight years since I’ve read anything by Kelly Barnhill, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that when faced with the (quite large) jump from stylistic choices between age groups, she does so with eery grace! The Crane Husband was a disturbing treat, quick but chilling.

I only had a vague notion of the original Japanese folktale of the Crane Wife that this book subverts, but even without that background, Barnhill weaves a haunting, dystopian fairytale like no other. It’s that lovely kind of book that falls into science fiction, but has just enough trappings of other genres to pass as something else. The magical realism element is heavier than the rest, and it rules the book—rightfully so, given the subject matter. But like a good fairytale, Barnhill’s ability to suspend disbelief made The Crane Husband all the scarier—scenes that would have otherwise seemed charmingly quirky or absurd were downright horrifying under her lens.

Barnhill’s writing was what sold how horrific the events of The Crane Husband truly were. The way she captured the voice of the unnamed, fifteen-year-old protagonist as she had to take her livelihood into her own hands in the face of the invading crane husband had such a tangible desperation, making the conflict feel real as all get out. Tension crept out from every word, and I found myself keeping my Kindle in a vice grip as I read. And that tension never wanes—in only 118 pages, Barnhill built up monumental tension that books three times the length have failed to uphold. The Crane Husband really was nail-bitingly eerie, and it was worth it all the way.

The way that Barnhill used this tangibly uncomfortable atmosphere to drive the point of this folktale’s subversion home was also masterful. The main twist in this iteration is, hence the title, that the protagonist’s mother brings home a giant crane who she takes as her husband. And instead of the crane wife wasting away to produce beautiful tapestries, it’s the human mother being forced by the crane husband to churn out tapestries like a machine. Abusive relationships were the main theme of the novella, and Barnhill’s depiction of abuse through this lens felt as authentic as it could be, from the strained, forced silence of the women of the family and the lack of support that the protagonist finds when she tries to seek help. Beyond that, The Crane Husband’s message about suffering for art was equally powerful and important; the emphasis on how the protagonist’s mother works to the point of near-death in order to create something that people will think of as “transformative” was commentary that I wasn’t expecting from the novel, but enjoyed wholeheartedly. Needs to be said.

That being said, my only major problem with this novella was that it directly referenced the original folktale that it’s retelling. Though it was in a flashback scene, it felt tacky and unnecessarily meta to hand it to you right there—and not only that, but basically delivering the twist right at your doorstep. I will admit that I loved the line about cranes making other creatures do the work for them, but at that point, it isn’t even foreshadowing anymore—it’s just whacking you over the head with the twist that it’s supposed to be hiding from you. It made me more than a little mad, but the rest of the novella was so good that I could almost let it slide. Almost.

All in all, a timely and truly disturbing retelling that packed a stinging punch with an impressively short page count. 4 stars!

The Crane Husband is a standalone; Kelly Barnhill is also the author of many books for children, including The Witch’s Boy, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and Iron-Hearted Violet. She is also the author of When Women Were Dragons, her first full-length novel for adults.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!