Review: 'The Crane Husband' by Kelly Barnhill

Aside from trying to read as many fairy tales and fantasy books as possible, I also like to read as many books a spossible in which women undergo strange, animalistic transformations. Thankfully, these tow interests often overlap, but not always. In the case of The Crane Husband, we find the oddest of things happening in the bleakest of realities. In her sharp and often painful novella, Barnhill explores gendered violence

Pub. Date: 2/28/2023
Publisher: Macmillan-Tor/Forge

“Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.”

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.

Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

The Crane Husband is a retelling of the Japanese fairy tale Tsuru Nyōbō, which is retold by the protagonist's father to her on his death bed. A man marries a crane woman, who uses her feathers to create silk brocade. He sells this, while she becomes more and more ill. When he finds out the truth, he asks her to stop but she says she is making the sacrifice for love. In The Crane Husband there is a crueler variation of the tale, also found in Japan, which involves betrayal. Barnhill's novella uses this tale of love, sacrifice, and betrayal in order to explore the themes of generational trauma, mother-daughter relationships, and creativity. Our unnamed protagonist, a young teenager forced to become responsible too soon, sees how her mother creates stories and tapestries out of nothing, how she is capable of creating utter beauty, and yet how she also willingly seems to subject herself to violence for the sake of love and creativity. Seemingly the question is how far one will go in creating and living one's story.

Our narrator lives on a farm with her mother, a famous but reclusive weaver, and her younger brother, Michael. Her father died years ago and since then our narrator is responsible for pretty much everything, from selling her mother's weavings online to buying groceries and getting her brother into bed. But that's fine. It isn't fine, however, once her mother brings home a humongous crane as her lover. The house becomes imbued with violence as the two move from bedroom to studio, leaving blood and feathers behind. Our narrator knows this story must come to an end, one way or another, and she just hopes she can keep her little brother safe. Barnhill conceives of a very grounded and realistic surrounding for her fantastic tale, with ever encroaching farm megacorps and stressed teachers. The switch between this and the fantastical events within the house create something of a whiplash which captures the experience of forcibly growing up too soon. I found myself unable to stop reading as I felt myself become ever more enclosed in this claustrophobic world with our narrator. 

What was most stunning to me about The Crane Husband was the way in which Barnhill managed to mingle reality and fantasy. When her mother returns home with a crane, who wears shoes, it feels like you've entered a fable or folk tale. The violence and sense of threat that follows is very real, however. As are the conversations with truancy officers and teachers. Is our narrator looking at a crane or a man? Does it even matter, if she already knows he's a threat? But the fluidity of this figure, the way he stalks through the house and the fields, the way he injures, that is all due to the masterful way in which Barnhill plays with perception and the idea of story-telling. Because in the end our narrator is telling this story and by the end of the novella we must question how reliable she is. Is she telling the story "as it happened" or, as one might fear, is she following in her mother's footsteps and dreaming up beauty amid horror? The Crane Husband engages very directly with domestic violence in ways that are quite affecting. While the structure around it may be fantastical, Barnhill doesn't shy away from depicting both the physical violence and the psychological horror of the situation. This will make it a difficult read for many, but that nonetheless makes it an important read. 

I give this novella...

4 Universes!

The Crane Husband is a fascinating piece of fiction in which the boundary between the real and the fantastic, pain and love, girl and woman are incredibly fragile. It's not an easy read, but a very worthwhile one.