When Women Were Dragons: an enduring, feminist novel from New York Times bestselling author, Kelly Barnhill

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There is very little I don’t love about this book. The prose is luscious, the setting - 1950/60s USA - is atmospheric in it’s stiflingly wilful silence, and the arc of Alex, the main character, is heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measure. This is a story of women and the universe, and all the ways we lie to each other to try to cope with reality and unreality, and the hypocritical normalcy of the 1950s and early 1960s. Of puns and euphemisms and saying without saying. Of mothers and daughters and aunts and cousins and first loves and growing up and figuring shit out. Of first loves and first losses. Of not just breaking outside of societal conventions, but smashing them completely and making something new. Of grief and joy and everything that comes in between. Of turning perceived weakness into impenetrable strength. The beautiful thing about science is we do not know what we cannot know and we will not know until we know.” A good knot requires presence of mind to make, and can act as a unshakable force in a shaky, unstable world.” When Women Were Dragons is a fabulously fierce, utterly original and unapologetically feminist novel that explores centuries of female rage, due to subjugation, violence and misogyny—leading women to spontaneously transform into DRAGONS. A relevant and timeless coming of age story that’s heartfelt, complex and thoroughly addictive.

This story is very much about discrimination and there are times I got so angry with the attitudes of some of the characters, this is all credit to the author. I do love a story that makes me go through various emotions and this one definitely did that. Anger, euphoria, happiness, sadness and a sense of justice are just some of them. The way the author portrayed Alex and other women was just so good, the way they carried themselves with eyes down at the ground while all the time wanting to look up and to the future made it quite a powerful read.

Featured Reviews

My mittens, sitting on the ground next to Beatrice and me, began to change. I watched as the yarn unwound itself and rewound differently, writhing gently like a basket of snakes … And it wasn’t just the mittens.” In the 1950s Alexandra "Alex" Green, the only child of an absentee father and a stern housewife mother, grows up under the influence of her beloved aunt Marla. In 1955 Marla leaves Alex her texts and love letters between her and several women before disappearing during the mass dragoning event of 1955 in which women morphed into dragons.

Kelly Barnhill couldn’t have realized when she wrote When Women Were Dragons how prescient it would be when it went on sale this month…Barnhill’s prose is gorgeous and powerful.” When Women Were Dragons is an attention-grabbing title. It sounds like alternative history, is it? Yes. But is it also a metaphor? Yes. Or is it an allegory? Again, yes. It’s also in part a coming-of-age story. You see, it all depends how you look at it. But I was wrong about a lot of things when it came to her. This is not particularly unusual. I think, perhaps, none of us ever know our mothers, not really. Or at least, not until it's too late.” In all this we can see clear parallels with America’s troubled political and social past, and its continuing legacy. Maybe he couldn't bear it. Maybe it hurt too much to watch her slip away. Maybe he wasn't raised to be a strong man. Maybe he loved her too much to lose her. Maybe all those things are true, and every other characterization I have for him that is ... more obvious and less kind ... perhaps those are true as well. And maybe this is the same with all of us - our best selves and our worst selves and our myriad iterations of mediocre selves are all extant simultaneously within a soul containing multitudes.”When Women Were Dragons is a fierce, unapologetically feminist, novel that I read (almost in it’s entirety) in one sitting. Despite knowing essentially nothing about it apart from the fact I loved the cover, the blurb was intriguing, and Dragons I am so very glad this book exists.

Alex’s fire and desire for answers never dies and only intensifies as she grows into a fiercely independent teenager in the era of the Mass Dragoning. Society turning in on itself, a mother more protective than ever; the upsetting and confusing insistence that Marla never even existed and watching her beloved Beatrice becoming dangerously obsessed with the forbidden. The representation of women in the 50s is very flat. I had a difficult time believing the portrayal that women are all kept housewives, completely restricted by their husbands from having any ownership of self. That their lives were utterly depressing and hopeless, that all men are evil, that all members of society happily imprison women to their homes and do not want them to be educated. This is a stereotype, a Hollywood myth, that serves the old-school flavor of feminism that the author favors in this book. There are times that this stank of TERF feminism - there's no outright TERFness but it certainly smelled similar to it. I had a very hard time believing society would cover up thousands of women turning into dragons - that it was censored from the news. Perhaps a strongly religious, cultish town would, but not national news. Alderman, Naomi (2022-06-12). "What About the Men?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-12-16. I, along with the rest of America listened with horror and incandescent fury to the brave, stalwart testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, as she begged the Senate to reconsider their Supreme Court Justice nominee and make a different choice, and I decided to write a story about rage. And dragons. But mostly about rage.” Overall, this was a powerfully moving, feminist and wonderfully queer coming of age story that I absolutely LOVED!by commentators, guest bloggers, reviewers, and interviewees are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Locus magazine or its staff. If the dragoning had been smaller in scope, there would have been a more concentrated effort at the suppression of news and a more robust campaign of misinformation in those early days. It had, after all, worked before.”