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Review: ‘When Women Were Dragons,’ by Kelly Barnhill
By Trisha Collopy
Star Tribune
W
hat can’t be named can’t
be questioned in this new
novel by Minneapolis writer Kelly
Barnhill, which immerses readers
in a post-World War II period of
conformity and repression with a
speculative twist.
The Newbery Medal-winning
children’s author dedicates her
fi rst novel for adult readers to
Christine Blasey Ford, whose
testimony at the confi rmation
hearings of Justice Brett Ka-
vanaugh unleashed the rage of
many women.
Barnhill transforms that sup-
pressed rage into a wellspring
of power, creating an alternate
timeline where women told to
suff er in silence instead sponta-
neously transform into dragons,
often immolating abusive men in
the process.
The story opens in a small
Wisconsin town, where Alex, a
budding scientist, grows up in a
household full of secrets.
No one will say why her moth-
er disappears for months, and
her unmarried Aunt Marla moves
in to take care of the family. Or
Doubleday
why her father disappears into
his work, sometimes not return-
ing home at night.
Meanwhile, alarming events
are happening in her commu-
nity, as women spontaneously
“dragon,” erupting in a confl a-
gration that sometimes levels
buildings.
These isolated eruptions are
hushed up, suppressed by the
local news media and by police
and fi re crews that respond to
the “incidents.” Scientists who
t
sco oo u k n s on a ly)
i
d
0% d b ing
seek answers to the phenom-
enon are called in for question-
ing and blackballed from their
universities.
Aunt Marla is a breath of fresh
air in this stifl ing environment.
She’s a mechanic who works in
a body shop — a large woman
who takes up space and stares
down men who cross her.
“My aunt was big and loud
and shiny. Sometimes she
laughed louder than any man I
knew. I found her thrilling, but
terrifying too. She had a way of
occupying a room that felt dan-
gerous,” Alex refl ects.
Then Aunt Marla disappears
during a “mass dragoning” of
nearly 650,000 women, leaving a
baby behind. Beatrice is ad-
opted as Alex’s “sister,” and any
mention of her aunt or dragons
is forbidden. Her mother begins
obsessively weaving knots, and
her parents cut off Alex’s friend-
ship with a neighbor girl, who
also disappears.
The odder things become,
the more Alex is forced to pre-
tend she doesn’t see what she
sees. The silence and confor-
mity, what one character calls
a “mass forgetting,” are as suf-
focating as a world that uplifts
men while constraining women
to secondary roles.
If much of the novel feels like
a full-throated howl, an indict-
ment of a system of gender
apartheid, an alchemy occurs in
the fi nal chapters.
Barnhill relaxes into her
characters, and it’s here that
“When Women Were Dragons”
really sings. The stakes feel
more genuine as Alex navigates
her fi rst relationship and also
grapples with letting Beatrice,
whom she has parented for
years, fi nd her own path.
The novel shifts from the
suff ocating conformity of the
1950s to a world where gender
identity, and the family struc-
tures built around it, turn out to
be more fl uid than anyone could
have imagined.
Written on the heels of that
bruising Supreme Court battle,
and before the current “Don’t
Say Gay” laws and push to ban
books, “When Women Were
Dragons” reminds us how
diffi cult it is to put the knowl-
edge of freedom back into the
bottle and the cost to a society
that tries.
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