The Crane Husband

Written by Kelly Barnhill

Narrated by Laura Knight Keating

Award-winning author Kelly Barnhill brings her singular talents to a raw, powerful fable of love, sacrifice, and family.

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.

But when her mom brings home a six-foot-tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to stop him forcing his way into their lives and her mom’s heart.

Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, she abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889567448

Kelly Barnhill

KELLY BARNHILL lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children. She is the author of four novels, most recently The Girl Who Drank the Moon, winner of the 2017 John Newbery Medal. She is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award and has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, a Nebula Award, and the PEN/USA literary prize. Visit her online at www.kellybarnhill.com or on Twitter: @kellybarnhill.

[Rian K · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Stunningly beautiful. There are so many quotable lines. I’m eager to reread this.

[quondame · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Her mother is an artist; her father dead. Her brother is barely school age. Before he died her father trained her in every competence he could, but at 15 even running a website for her mother's art and finances, isn't enough to keep social services at bay when her mother brings home a crane husband and devotes all her time to him. This is a tale of witnessed obsession and the abandonment. The details are fantastic, but the bones are all too real. The book has a strong, almost overwhelming mood to it and is best enjoyed when that mood is sought after.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

*E-ARC made available by the publisher through Edelweiss Plus - thank you!*

The narrator recounts what happened when she was fifteen and her brother six, when her artist mother brought home a crane and told them to call him "Father." The girl has always had to be her brother's protector and essentially parent him, but now there's even more challenges. The crane is mean, leaving scratching and bruises on her mother; and her mother, never a great parent at the best of times becomes ever more distant and is not selling art to provide for the family any longer.

This was not pleasant reading by any means. Ostensibly, it's a retelling of "The Crane Wife," but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the author decided to make the crane the husband instead. It doesn't really shift the meaning of the original, as far as I could tell, and maybe even makes it worse because the woman not only gives of herself, she's abused. The daughter is hard-pressed to change their circumstances, and the ending was as dark as any original fairy tale. Barnhill does, however, have writing chops and she's able to convey a story and atmosphere in a novella.

[spiritedstardust · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.25

Weaver mother brings home a bird daddy for her kids. Said daddy likes to scratch. Teenage daughter has to become the parent. Main themes are domestic abuse and parental neglect. Felt YA.

[bornanalog · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed--although that is too light a term--this when I read it, but it has also stuck with me. I appreciated the minimalist approach here, which befits a contemporary revision of a traditional (there are actually several versions) fairy tale. Barnhill really understands how fairy tales work and has resisted the temptation of many of her contemporaries to over-elaborate on them in their own retellings. The narrative feels claustrophobic, but at the same time leaves a lot of gaps and spaces for us to think our way into the story and its implications. Traditional fairy tales are often more deeply ambiguous than many believe, particularly if we are familiar only with the sanitized versions of the much darker originals collected by the Grimms, etc. In this case much of the ambiguity comes from a single question: why is such an old, familiar story--a woman whom submits to abuse and abandons herself and those around her--one that too many people inhabit anew, and as if for the first time, everyday? Her teenage protagonist provides one set of answers: we inhabit a world where people see and don't see what is right in front of them.

Much of the attention this book has garnered--and you can see it in many of the other reviews here so far on LT--focuses on gender issue. However Barnhill's interest in the gender dynamics is wrapped up in a broader examination of cultural shifts in technology, farming, commerce, and the art market. Many of those elements nag at the edges of consciousness while reading the book (the creepy agribusiness next door, the fawning online collectors for the mother's art); this is, fundamentally, a smart story about how private abuse is fostered by a broader culture that turns a blind eye to all kinds of abuse.

[ladycato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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).

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[niaomiya · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Strange, magical realist novella about a widowed female artist whole falls in love with a big, cruel bird, while her more practical daughter struggles with the daily details of keeping their household together. Agribusiness, global warming, the foster care system, and the purpose of art all figure into the narrative, which covers a lot of ground even though it is just 128 pages long. Well worth reading and discussing.