When Women Were Dragons

March 21, 2022
Newbery winner Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) makes her adult debut with a deeply felt exploration of feminism in an alternate fantastical history. Alex Green was a child in Wisconsin in 1955 when over 600,000 American women spontaneously turned into dragons, including her beloved Aunt Marla, and flew away. Alex’s mother brings Marla’s daughter Beatrice to live with them and, like the rest of American society, refuses to even discuss dragons. Alex grows up adoring her younger cousin, and their close friendship assuages the stress she feels from her mother’s pressure to succeed at school, as well as from her chauvinist father. After Alex’s mother dies of cancer, her father moves the girls into a tiny apartment where he offers meager financial support and forbids Alex from shopping at the grocery store, afraid people will think he can’t provide for them. Determined to get to college, Alex plows through high school with the help of a librarian; she also cautions Beatrice over her “dangerous” attraction to images of angry dragons. Meanwhile, flyers promising the truth about the “Great Dragoning” begin to appear around town, and scientists try to determine the cause of the women’s metamorphosis. Barnhill makes palpable Alex’s sense of loss as well as the strictures of mid-century American life. This allegory packs a punch. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House.

March 15, 2022
On April 25, 1955, 642,987 women transformed spontaneously into dragons--only for the world to turn its back and try to forget it ever happened. Dragons become a taboo topic like menstruation or female orgasm, embarrassing and inappropriate--and most of all, dangerous. In this fantastical satire by acclaimed fantasy author Barnhill (best known for award-winning middle-grade novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon, 2016), Alex Green tries to grow up in a world oppressed by a heavy, carefully enforced silence, a world in which young girls are raised amidst tightly wound limitations and underestimation. And in a fog of her own silence, she finds rage building in her chest. Barnhill's novel and its wild premise expertly satire the patriarchy and its machinations--from the suppression of information to the indoctrination of gender roles. The narrative turns female rage and joy into weapons, all while resisting the rigid gender binaries that gender-focused magic systems can fall prey to. It is infuriating in all the best ways and finds the raw magic within women's determination to break free.

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Starred review from April 1, 2022

Barnhill's (The Witch's Boy) adult debut is a feminist historical fantasy tackling self-discovery, queer identity, and dysfunctional family. On April 25, 1955, hundreds of thousands of women transformed into rampaging dragons and left charred corpses, destroyed buildings, and broken homes in their wake. That day, Alex Green lost her cherished Aunt Marla, and ever since, her parents have refused to acknowledge the loss of Marla or the addition of a new baby, who's related to Alex by blood but not by parentage. Alex's crush on schoolmate Sonia and concern about her precocious sister's fixation on dragons are further complicated by her father's growing aloofness, her mother's restrictive smothering, and a world that insists the Mass Dragoning never happened. Facing loss, heartbreak, and fury, Alex wonders: will the fire that burns inside her give her wings? Or cost her those she loves most? Barnhill's sharp and lyrical prose showcases the joys and agonies of female power in this coming-of-age/alternate history. VERDICT Readers will be moved, discomforted, and inspired by Alex's introspective voice and experiences.--Kristi Chadwick

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Starred review from March 15, 2022
As women around the world inexplicably transform into dragons, a young girl struggles to take care of her cousin in 1950s America. It's indecent to speak about dragons, just as it would be indecent to talk about, say, menstruation or the burning, building rage that so many women feel day to day. Because it's such a forbidden topic, to the extent that scientists who study the dragon transformations are silenced by the government, no one really understands why "dragooning" happens or how it works. When Alex's Aunt Marla is among the thousands of women who all turn into dragons together on the same day in 1955, her beloved cousin, Beatrice, becomes her adopted sister. And when Alex is in high school and her own mother dies of cancer, her father sticks her in a cheap apartment and tells her she's old enough to raise Beatrice on her own. Alex inherited her mother's talent for math and science, and she struggles between her own rage at how her abilities are constantly diminished by the men around her and her resentment that her Aunt Marla became a dragon and abandoned her and Beatrice. But the older Beatrice gets, the more she longs to become a dragon herself, and Alex lives in terror that Beatrice will leave her behind. In lesser hands the dragon metaphor would feel simplistic and general, but Barnhill uses it to imagine different ways of living, loving, and caring for each other. The result is a complex, heartfelt story about following your heart and opening your mind to new possibilities. This novel's magic goes far beyond the dragons.

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