I read this novella as part of the Nebula finalist packet. The Crane Husband is a disturbing, gothic-tinged meditation on how women succumb to abuse. Though mythology forms a major undercurrent, it feels incredibly contemporary and relevant (which is a tragedy unto itself). ( )

Dit boek ben ik begonnen te lezen omdat ik erg heb genoten van When Women Were Dragons van dezelfde schrijfster. Eigenlijk is dit een zelfde soort verhaal als in dat boek. De mensen kunnen van vorm veranderen. Het wordt verteld door een naamloos meisje van 15 jaar. Zij wonen in een boerderij waarvan al het land is verkocht aan een grote firma die alleen maar graan verbouwen. Haar familie bestaat uit vader, moeder het meisje en haar 6 jarige broertje Michael. De moeder is een kunstenares die bekend staat om haar prachtig geweven wandtapijten. De vader wordt ziek en overlijdt als Michael nog een baby is. Aangezien de moeder geld moet verdienen door de verkoop van de wandtapijten, doet het meisje het grootste gedeelte van het huishouden. Als de moeder op een bepaald moment binnen komt lopen met een kraanvogel als vriend gaat het helemaal mis. Eerdere vriendjes van moeder verdwenen al snel maar deze kraanvogel blijft en haar moeder gaat steeds vreemder doen. Het meisje heeft ook het idee dat haar moeder mishandelt wordt. Om voor Michael te kunnen blijven zorgen moet het meisje drastische dingen doen. ( )

Somewhere in the U.S. Midwest in the far-ish future, a girl's mother brings home a new partner. This partner is abusive, and is also a crane. This is a re-imagining of the folktale of The Crane Wife. Some of Kelly Barnhill's prose is truly lovely, but even within the givens of a magical-realist folktale, I found the world-building shallow. There are some nice observations about the tensions between love and obligation, but what Barnhill has to say about gender—surely at the heart of any genderswapped story—felt glib.

(Also, Barnhill might be capable of a nice turn of phrase, but who's writing Tor's copy? "A fifteen-year-old teenager"? C'mon.) ( )

Reason read: It caught my eye when I was at the library and I had read her The Girl Who Drank the Moon. I did not know what to suspect but it starts out creepy. The first sentence; "The crane came in through the front door like he owned the place". The story is set in the Midwest on a house set up against a field of corn farmed by a conglomerate and machinery that is run remotely. The narrator is a 15 y/o girl who is taking care of her younger brother and her mother's weaving business.

The story is a retelling of a Japanese folktale which is about transformation. I am not familiar with the folktale and I am not sure if that was a disadvantage. Essentially the story is of a 15 y/o girl and her younger brother essentially abandoned by their mother for the man/crane who is abusive to their mother.

"men, women, and those who had transcended those categories"
"winters that now oscillated between unsettling temperate damp and bitter cold".

pg 34 "...the sweep of time and the tragedy of love and the persistent presence of the grave."
pg 117 "maybe we never actually run away. Maybe everywhere's the same."
pg 117 "I guess we really are what we are born for."
pg 118 "Her black eye is a pool of ink. It is a bottomless pit. It is a collapsed star. All density and hunger and relentless gravity, pulling everything it can into its center--to be unraveled, unmade, undone, and unrecognizable. How can anyone survive that kind of love?"

The author lives in Mpls and she started writing this letter while in southern Minnesota buying an RV and talking to the lady who was moving after selling her farm to a conglomeration. I enjoyed the story but it is creepy. ( )

This book was a subversive retelling of the Japanese folkloric tale "The Crane Wife." The narrator is a woman looking back at when she was a 15-year-old girl and her mother brought home a crane as a lover/companion. From that point on, the girl (whose name we never learn) runs the household because her father died of illness many years ago and her mother is an artist who abandons all responsibilities when the crane comes into her life. While the mother focuses just on pleasing the crane and creating whatever grand artistic masterpiece the crane is demanding, the girl takes care of her six-year-old brother Michael, makes all the meals, cleans the house, tends to the sheep on their farm, and handles the marketing and sales of her mother's artwork.

Eventually, when she realizes the crane is not leaving anytime soon, the girl is forced to take the situation into her own hands in order to protect her family. ( )