Somewhere in the U.S. Midwest in the far-ish future, a girl's mother brings home a new partner. This partner is abusive, and is also a crane. This is a re-imagining of the folktale of The Crane Wife. Some of Kelly Barnhill's prose is truly lovely, but even within the givens of a magical-realist folktale, I found the world-building shallow. There are some nice observations about the tensions between love and obligation, but what Barnhill has to say about gender—surely at the heart of any genderswapped story—felt glib.

(Also, Barnhill might be capable of a nice turn of phrase, but who's writing Tor's copy? "A fifteen-year-old teenager"? C'mon.) ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

A marvelous retelling of the Japanese crane folktale set in modern day. I loved the 15-year old protagonist daughter who has been forced to grow up much quicker than she should. Some of her comments made me laugh out loud, however the sad state of her home life with her mother's relationship with this nasty crane and having to care for her much younger brother made her humor even more cutting in the circumstances. Overall, it was an intense tale of neglect, delusion and generational trauma that her mother wasn't able to shake. There was a moment that made me quite vividly think of the movie Birdman, which I also loved. Lastly, the cover art is breathtaking. ( )

Their mother had always been a little distant, a little scatterbrained. She is an artist, a talented weaver who creates stories and emotions out of thread. But they got on all right until the day she brought home the crane and told them to call him "Father." Their own father had died some years ago of a wasting disease, and though their mother had brought home boyfriends since then, they'd never lasted long. The crane is different, though. He takes up all of her attention, and leaves cuts and bruises on their mother's skin. He's cruel, and the family's sheep fear him. Michael is only 6, and he's also afraid of the crane. But it's his 15-year-old sister who is going to have to do something to protect herself and her brother at any cost...

Though the setting is the near future, this story has a timeless, fairy-tale feel. Told from the perspective of the unnamed 15-year-old daughter, this story is dark and complex, but also deeply magical. Recommended to fans of dark fairy tale retellings. ( )