This was a beautiful and haunting read. I really enjoy When Women Were Dragons too, and this story cements Kelly Barnhill as one of those authors that are a must-read for me. At 107 pages, it's a quick read, but one that will stay with you. Thanks NetGally and Tor for the ARC!

Wow! Fantastic!

The Crane Husband is a retelling of The Crane Wife. This story is told from a 15 year old unnamed girl. She is the backbone of the family. Since her father died, she has to take care of her mother and her six year old brother. She has to do the budgeting and the household finances and raise her younger brother while her mom, a famous artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years it has been just the three of them. Her mom would bring home guests or men at times but none of them ever stayed. Then the mom brings home a six-foot tall crane that is mean. Her mom is so enchanted by this crane who is demanding and abusive.

At first I had a hard time with the content but then the prose just got me. This is such a lyrical and poetic novella. This little story tells about domestic abuse, a teenage girl that has to grow up faster than normal, and a six year old boy that doesn't understand wait is happening to his mother. The content was hard to hear however it was written so beautifully that it was amazing to read. This is my first book by Kelly Barnhill and I'm hooked. I will be ready ALL of her books.

I highly recommend this book. Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!

If you enjoy dark fairy tales - think Grimm style - this is absolutely the story for you. The blurb really tells all you can about the plot of this novella, but what is missing is the absolutely foreboding atmosphere of the story itself. You, as the reader, and through the eyes of our narrator, have no idea what is happening between the Mother and the Crane; what they are working on or towards. So much context is missing - you have to guess so much. Or you could not - you could read what you're told and decide the rest isn't what matters. Maybe what matters is that it happened and the narrator remembers it well enough to tell the story to someone else. That seems a bit cerebral so I'll just say that I enjoyed this dark little tale more than I though I would after the first chapter and will look into more works by Barnhill.

**Thank you NetGalley and Tordotcom for the eARC**

this is a very beautiful, unsettling story about abuse and family. i read this in one sitting and really loved every minute. it's true magical realism, which is surprisingly difficult to find in recent years. it's bizarre and confusing at times, it's hard to distinguish the 'magical' from the 'real,' and it's an allegory told in lyrical, fabular prose.. an easy 5 stars. highly recommended!

Spectacular, devastating, perfect. An absolutely gorgeous retelling of The Crane Wife that adds such nuance and complexity to the source text. I loved everything about it, from the faintly dystopic setting to the edge of magic on everything to the amazing heroine and her narrative voice.

The Crane Husband is a brilliant and lyrical retelling of The Crane Wife.

An unnamed fifteen-year-old girl lives with her mother and younger brother on the remains of what used to be family farmland. Now, an intimidating conglomerate owns the farmlands that surround their crumbling property.

While her mother works on her art to pay the bills, our heroine takes care of her brother and household matters.

One day, the girl’s mother returns home wrapped in the arms of a human-sized crane. It’s not unusual for her mother to bring home new partners since her father’s passing, so the girl assumes their affair will be just as fleeting. However, she soon realizes her mother is completely infatuated with the crane, who exudes a menacing air. The girl watches as her mother makes herself small while creating a masterpiece of art at the crane’s behest.

This short novel is both harrowing and beautifully written. I love magical realism, and this was no exception.

It discusses domestic violence quite a bit, so some readers may find it triggering. While it touches on dark subject matter, it is easy to become wholly enraptured reading this tale.

As the reader, you know what’s going on, but it’s oddly satisfying watching the main character fit all the pieces together and take her mother’s teachings to heart.

While I enjoyed The Girl Who Drank the Moon, I didn’t love it nearly as much as this one.

If you like folk/fairytale retellings, I’m almost positive you’ll enjoy this weird little gem as well.

Thank you to Tordotcom for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ​

https://booksandwheels.com

An elegant novella based on the Crane Wife folktale.

Kelly Barnhill is so talented and she really invites the reader into this bleak world. With a near-future setting. THE CRANE HUSBAND is a well-written story that touches on abuse and family dysfunction, The narrator's voice is strong and well-crafted. I enjoyed the descriptions of the Midwest and how it has changed in the future. The author has a strong imagination, and the narrative style is quite blunt. We get the message about the dehumanizing effects of technology. Ultimately this feels like a dark adult fairytale that is well worth reading.

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!!

I'm not crying! My eyes are just watering....

I knew what I was getting into with this novella because I've read different variations of the folktale The Crane Wife, and it always leaves me devastated.

This, though? This, in particular, really got inside and had my heart beating for this family. A 15 year old girl is narrating in first person through this story. I think the author's choice to leave this character so open to interpretation made her more relatable, not just to me, but I imagine, to many other readers as well. This is a hard-hitting quick read.

This 15 year old girl lives on a farm with her younger brother and artist mother. Her mother is quite flighty and has different men over for sleep-overs frequently. But, when the Crane man comes, everything gets bad fast.

The narrator takes care of the household and her little brother, even her mom's finances and artwork sales. When this giant Crane appears, her mother is infatuated with him, although he leaves her bruised and bloody. This story is about domestic violence and child negligence, and I'll admit, it's difficult to read at parts, but this story ends with a powerful message and strength.

I loved this so much and highly recommend it. There are content warnings for physical abuse and child negligence.

Out February 28, 2023!

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

This was a DARK book. Set in a rather dystopian future and with the main character in a very bleak place. Are you hooked yet? If you are in the mood for a book that is rife with children in jeopardy, parental abuse, government and industry gone amuck, and horror... then this book is for you! I'll admit that I wasn't in the mood for this type of book when I read it, yet I can still appreciate the quality of writing and the disturbing visions that this book has left embedded in my mind. You've been warned.

Creepy and gorgeous. Near-dystopia, but with some unexplained magic that whisks women away from the drudgery of the farm.

Magical realism and folk tale retellings will always be top tier and this book was no different! The prose was stunning, the subject matter sad but in a beautiful, somber kind of way and the main character easily captured my heart with her grit and desire to do right by her little family.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for my arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

"The Crane Husband" by Kelly Barnhill is a modern adult fairy tale that deals with domestic abuse, neglect, sacrifice, and family. The protagonist is a fifteen year old tasked with taking care of her mother and younger brother after the death of her father. She cooks, cleans, takes care of her brother, balances the books, and handles the business side of her mother's artwork. Their lives change when her mother brings home a crane man and announces his extended stay.

This one was difficult for me to read. The young girl and her brother's positions made me incredibly sad and frustrated; the young girl has had to grow up quickly in order to take care of her mother and her young brother yearns for the love and attention of a mother who neglects him for the most part. When the crane man shows up, the situation worsens as it becomes obvious that the mother is being abused when she is often described as having deep cuts and bruises all over her body. By the time everything came to a head, I felt relief but sadness for everything the young girl did for her younger brother just for everything to end up the way it did.

I enjoyed this book a lot and I love how Barnhill writes magical realism but man was it an emotional time.

This was absolutely brilliant. Barnhill managed to do so much in such a sort amount of time. I thought that the dystopian aspect of the novel was a great addition and exasperated the Midwest desolation feel.

I really enjoy stories that are from a child's perspective but told for adults.

Kelly Barnhill’s novella The Crane Husband is a darkly grim reimagining of and response to the Crane Wife folktale. A tough read thanks to its bleak near-future setting and dark focus on abuse and family dysfunction, and at times quite blunt in fable fashion, it’s also a rewarding read thanks to its lovely sparse language and strongly voiced narrator.

The story is set in the run-down and nearly abandoned rural Midwest, a few steps into the future where farmland is owned by a single far-away large conglomerate that raises monocultured, cloned corn via drones and “driverless tractors and remote-control harvesters.” As our narrator notes in an example of that vivid prose, “No one was a farmer anymore. No one touched the dirt anymore. No one walked through the endless rows, their fingers whispering along the dark green leaves. No one was allowed — not us, not strangers, not animals . . . the drones moved back and forth, guarding a world made only for corn.”

Barnhill opens with an unexpected and unsettling line — “The crane came in through the front door like he own the place” — and things spiral downward from there. Our narrator is an unnamed 15-year-old girl who has taken on the role of practical adult (and mother to her younger brother) in the family after the death of her father from illness since her mother is a somewhat flighty artist who in addition to spending most of her time creating massive multi-modal tapestries has a series of temporary lovers. At first, the narrator thinks the crane will fall into that same characterization, but instead he becomes a fixture in their home, filling the house with feathers and physically and emotionally abusing her mother, who becomes more and more obsessed with her current project (driven by the crane) to the point of neglecting her own health and her children’s well-being. When a social worker enters the picture and the threat arises of losing her little brother, the narrator has to decide how far she is willing to go to protect those she loves.

The prose, as noted, is a major strength in the novella, with a good sense of rhythm an language and a nice sense of the sharp details, such as the hat worn by the crane at a “jaunty angle” or the way its wearing her father’s old shoes when they first meet it. The narrator herself is impossible not to empathize with — fierce, loving, protective, smart, resourceful, and despite all that trapped in a nightmare she can’t escape while she does all she can to hold her family together even as she bears witness to its slow dissolution. The themes, meanwhile, are complex, exploring a range of issues such as the obligations one has to self, to art, to family; the role, impact, and commodification of art; social constraints on women, self-sacrifice — its cost, rewards, and limits; the dehumanizing effect of technology.

The story reads like a fable, and therefore may evoke different responses. Personally, I prefer my writing to be a bit less on the nose and so the narrative was at times too bluntly, too overt in its conveyance of idea and theme, whether that came through dialogue or dream sequences, or the like. And the narrator’s epiphany about the crane in their house came a bit implausibly late for me. But outside of those complaints, The Crane Husband is a movingly dark and vividly written fable for contemporary times.

I picked this book up because I really enjoyed Barnhill's book [book:The Girl Who Drank the Moon|28110852]. Also, the cover is definitely eye-catching. This is a retelling, somewhat, of the folk tale "The Crane Wife" and is told by a fifteen year old who had taken charge of the household after her father's death. The mother, an artist, has had men come and go over the years, but none have stayed. But then she brings home a nasty crane and instructs her two children to call him Father.

This is a disturbing book. It has themes of children who have to grow up too soon, abuse, negligence, depression and grief. There's a lot pack into the pages of this short book. The writing is lyrical and pulls you into the magical realism.

Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on February 28, 2023.

Kelly Barnhill's prose hasn't faltered, and the beautiful writing in The Crane Husband is enough to make it a worthwhile read. It is different from her previous books: very short, a retelling, quite bizarre. I imagine it won't be a favorite for many but it's an eerie work of fiction that will find a home among fans of experimental and slightly odd stories.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Magical Realism + Retelling

This novella is a retelling of the folktale “The Crane Wife”. The story is narrated by an unnamed 15-year-old girl. She lives with her talented artist mother and her six-year-old brother, Michael, in a farm town. Her mother is constantly working in her studio or entertaining the numerous gentlemen with whom she continues to have affairs. None of these relationships last, though, except when the crane man shows up.

The girl gets worried about her mother, who seems to be fully enchanted by this new fling. What she thought would be like the others—a short fling—felt like something more. Being fully under the crane’s charm, the mother will isolate herself and weave her masterpiece, which was demanded by the crane. But the girl has to do something to get rid of the crane.

The beauty of magical realism is that the interpretation is always left up to the readers. After finishing this book, I read briefly about the original folktale, which sounded fascinating as well. The Crane Husband is a very atmospheric novella. It is surreal and, at times, even scary. The author’s writing is very beautiful and lyrical, which made the story even more enchanting. I think Kelly Barnhill did a great job with the characters. The story deals with themes like abuse, child negligence, the loss of a loved one, and depression. For a novella of this length, I believe the story has a lot of depth, and the magical aspects of both the plot and the narration will work together to make it a story that is never forgotten. I enjoyed it a lot.

I'm grateful for the advanced reader copy of this book that the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and NetGalley provided me.

This is a strange and wonderful contemporary take on the story of the Crane wife of Japanese tradition. Here a daughter narrates the story of her widowed mother coming home with a crane. But it also delves into the story of the women in her family—flying away when their children were of an age to exist without their mother. It’s haunting, magical, sad, and so strongly grounded in reality. Fans of Seanan McGuire or Jane Yolen take note.

WOAH. That was a rush. What an incredible book - I devoured it in one sitting.

Just like with When Women Were Dragons, I was sucked in from page one. Kelly Barnhill has this style that really speaks to me: I'm not sure what it is in particular, but it's mildly hypnotic. I loved the backdrop of the futuristic farmstead setting, where farmers no longer exist. I loved the closed space that wraps around the family like a trap.

The one thing I would raise an eyebrow for is how similar this MC is to that of When Women Were Dragons? Very similar lives, as a young child is a sole provider for an even younger sibling. The themes were also very similar like this novella was another facet of the issues brought up in the novel.

This was dark, but I love Kelly Barnhill’s writing. She has a great way of getting into the minds of her characters. And although the plot is strange because of the crane, it’s an all-too-familiar story of abuse, familial obligations, and survival.