Reviews with content warning for Cancer - When Women Were Dragons

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When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

164 reviews

chloemakesbooks's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Although I do think the end of the book could have stood to get a haircut of about 50 pages or so (typical youth fiction author feels the need to play out the entire lives of her characters) the book was an interesting foray into magical realism, with some really difficult hit-too-close-to-home moments and some beautiful passages toward the end. I wish the author had spent more time with the dragons (and clearly, she wanted to, hence the drag toward the end) but what time we did get was lots of fun.

Content Warnings

leweylibrary's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I was always going to Love this book. I really just didn't have a choice on the matter. Hey historical fantasy novel with feminist and LGBTQ+ themes? Add on top of it. The pros that I loved from the first page enough to note several quotes, and I was a goner. Even the acknowledgments hit me really hard in the best way.

I love the way the "historical documents" were woven into the story throughout and helped give context to Alex's story. The author says it best in the acknowledgments really: the story starts out being full of righteous rage, then it starts morphing into something much more, something that talks about memory, self-acceptance, grief, collective trauma, misinformation and ignorance, and the lengths humans will go to in order to keep their worlds the same.

The first chunk of the book definitely reminded me so much of a class I took in undergrad called The American Woman, specifically when we talked about the Feminine Mystique and The Problem That Has No Name. As much as I loved this and it got me thinking and reflecting so much, I loved that it didn't stop there and it pushed further into using dragons as a more broad metaphor for in general becoming your full, true self, especially in regards to LGBTQIA+ identities.

I also want to note that a lot of times historical fiction novels with feminist themes are difficult for me because of the sexism that's of course always omnipresent in those settings. However, in this book, I think it was reassuring to me to know that most of the time these women had already dragoned and gotten away from these problems and become their full, true selves. So the sexism misogyny always felt very temporary and insignificant compared to the mammoth size of dragons. I was also really glad to see that Beatrice became a full-fledged badass ☺️

Now prepare for A LOT of quotes!

Quotes:

There is no room for sorrow in a heart full of fire. (3)
And now I shall see to him. Tooth and claw. The downtrodden becomes the bearer of a heavenly, righteous flame. It burns me, even now. I find myself unbound by Earth, unbound by man, unbound by wifely duty and womanly pain.
I regret nothing. (3)
Does a flower remember its life as a seed? Does a phoenix recall itself as it burns anew? You will not see me again. I shall be but a shadow streaking across the sky--fleeting, speeding, and utterly gone. (3)
I think, perhaps, none of us ever know our mothers, not really. Or at least, not until it's too late. (7)
I was 4 years old when I first saw a dragon. I was 4 years old when I first learned to be silent about dragons. Perhaps this is how we learn silence--an absence of words, an absence of context, a hole in the universe where the truth should be. (9)
Men, after all, delight in nothing so much as to recast themselves in the center of the story. (19)
... Throughout history, the occasional and seemingly spontaneous bouts of female dragoning (they are not, in truth, spontaneous, but we will get to that later in this paper) are almost universally followed by a collective refusal to accept incontrovertible facts, and a society-wide decision to forget verifiable events that are determined to be too alarming, too messy, too unsettling. (19-20)
But here's the thing, Alex, my love. This is a new information, and your mother isn't alone. All women are magic. Literally all of us. It's in our nature. It's best you learn that now. (30)
It was too shocking.
It was too embarrassing.
It was too, well, feminine. Words stumbled and cheeks went red and the subject became impolite. And so the world looked the other way. It was, for almost everyone, like any other taboo subject--cancer, or miscarriages, or menstruation--spoken of in tight whispers and vague innuendos before changing the subject.
Still. (43)
Embaraassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth. (55)
In the end, though, their dragon wives did not remain suited for a life of homemaking. The lives they lived no longer fit. They found their gaze drifting elsewhere--beyond the limits of the house, beyond the limits of the yard, beyond the limits of the daily tasks of washing and straightening and keeping up appearances. They found that their vision had widened to contain the whole sky, and beyond the sky. The more they looked, the more they longed, and the more they longed, the more they planned, and finally the husbands returned home one evening to dinner in the oven, several meals in the freezer, and notes on the dining room table, still somewhat scorched, saying, "thanks for trying, my love. But we both know it wasn't going to work anyway." (58)
The country had no precedent for this scale of national grief, and as a result every single coordinated response--on a national level, or a community level, or even at the level of individual families--was neither honest, nor useful, nor kind. We had no guide, you see? No agreed upon workable models or determined courses of action. This was an unspeakable loss. And many chose to never speak of it. (58)
The librarian refused to vacate, and the officers were forced to arrest her as well. She waved her right to remain silent, saying that she wanted the following to be recorded in this report, verbatim: "There is nothing lewd about biology, research, or basic facts, gentlemen, and you make yourselves fools when you try to classify the quest for understanding as obscene. The only thing more patently obscene than ignorance is willful ignorance. Arrest yourselves." (64)
It was hubris, of course it was hubris, to think that I could have the power to bind that which must not be bound, alter what should not be altered, and change the hearts of those who wish not to be changed. It is my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault, and I do not think that even our Lord who suffers for our sake will suffer my presence in the next world. Perhaps this is as it should be. Instead I must use my last fleeting moments on this earth to declare my sins to those I have sinned against, and beg their pardon. I am sorry, oh glinting, gilded girls of the waves! I am sorry, oh girls of tooth and claw, oh girls of sinew and scale, girls of speed and intellect and power! Forgive me, or not, it is all the same. May my last sorrowful breath be a testament to my wrongs against you, and to the terrible audacity of men. (87)
She [the librarian] greeted my mother the way she greeted everyone else: the sort of brisk benevolence of a person with far more to do than anyone realizes. (92)
Instead, they drew dragons. Big dragons, tiny dragons. Dragons destroying skyscrapers and dragon swimming with whales and dragons dancing on the head of a pen and dragons skidding down one arm of the Milky Way. Dragons in school desks. Dragons in cars. Dragons doing dishes. Dragons downing missiles. Dragons laying waste to armies or governments or home economics classrooms. There were no words. No explanations. No statements of intent. Just dragons. (96)
When I was a child, my mother disappeared. And the adults in my life didn't explain, they didn't soothe, they didn't provide context to allow me to understand my situation. I was a child, you see? I was supposed to be well-mannered and obedient. My eyes on the ground. I didn't need to know anything. And they hoped I would forget. (125)
And maybe this is the same with all of us--our best selves and our worse selves and our myriad iterations of mediocre selves are all extant simultaneously within a soul containing multitudes. (126)
BERTHA GREEN the paper read. I found myself mouthing my mother's name, rolling it over my teeth and tongue. I had never said her name out loud before. Her name was only "Mother." What else had been taken away from her, I wondered, besides her name? (130)
And now I realize, there is a freedom in forgetting.
Or at least it is something that feels like freedom.
There is a freedom in not asking questions.
There is a freedom in being unburdened by unpleasant information.
And sometimes, a person has to hang on to whatever freedoms she can get. (160)
"Look," he said. His voice became sharp and desperate. "Some ideas are dangerous, okay? And some notions upend people's lives. Families get ruined. We tried to keep it all away from you, your mother and I. We agreed that innocence is safer. I wish you had found yourself a nice man and were engaged already. It would be a huge relief, frankly, if I knew you were well in hand. I told your mother she should be molding you more appropriately for matrimony, but she never listened to me. I thought running a household would be good for you. Keep your eyes on the ground and give you some practice for a good, solid future. But no, you had that librarian filling your head with mathematics and college and other horseshit. And now here we are."(222)
But without questions, there can be no knowledge. (223)
There were a lot of falsehoods in this world, and it seemed a large percentage of them were posted in hallways and announced on the school's PA system. (225)
The thinking went that the risk of insubordination with dragoned students was incalculable. How on earth could they be educated when they couldn't be subdued? principals wondered. (277)
You have brought me here, gentlemen, in hopes of conquest--in an attempt to reign in this feminine largeness, to shrink it down and force it to acquiesce to your paternal control, to allow our culture to forget that any of this dragon business ever happened. This, my friends, is an impossibility. While it is true that there's a freedom in forgetting--and this country has made great use of that freedom--there's a tremendous power in remembrance. Indeed, it is memory that teaches us, and reminds us, again and again, who we truly are and who we have always been. The dragons are here to stay. Let us remember everything that brought us to this moment. Let us remember all those we have lost. Let us remember our loved ones as they were so that we may accept them as they are, just as we accept our country--changed, flawed, and growing--as it now is. Just as we must accept the world.
Personally, I think it's rather marvelous.( 280)
Does memory decay? Does it shrivel and dry up and collapse? Is it a cricket in the pocket of the goddess, alive only through the force of misplaced love? (285)
The smallness and largeness of an individual life does not change the fundamental honor and value of every manifestation of our personhood. (306)
She made the world more of itself and tied me to it--tied my mind to my body, tied my heart to hers. An unbreakable knot. Sometimes, I feel that we are all tricked by love, and its rigid requirement of pain. We find the love of our lives and cleave to our beloved when we are still quite young and do not yet understand that we must, by our nature, die someday. In any successful marriage, one partner must face the reality of being very old, and very alone. What is grief, but love that's lost its object? (334)
Memory is a strange thing. It reorganizes and connects. It provides context and clarity; it reveals patterns and divergences. It finds the holes in the universe and stitches them closed, tying the threads together in a tight, unbreakable knot. (336)
The work of storytelling requires a person to remain in a state of brutal vulnerability and punishing empathy. (Acknowledgments 339)
Stories are funny things, though. We think we know what they will be when we begin, but they have minds of their own. They are so like our children in this way. I thought I was writing a short story. I wasn't. The story very quickly informed me that it wanted to be a novel. Who was I to argue? I thought I was writing a story about rage. I wasn't. There's certainly rage in this novel, but it is about more than that. In its heart, this is a story about memory, and trauma. It's about the damage we do to ourselves and our community when we refuse to talk about the past. It's about the memories that we don't understand, and can't put into context, until we learn more about the world. And I thought it was writing about a bunch of fire-breathing, powerful women. And while those women certainly are in this book, it isn't about them. It's about a world upended by trauma and shamed into silence. And that silence grows, and becomes toxic, and it affects every aspect of life. Perhaps this sounds familiar to you now--times being what they are. (Acknowledgments 340)
This book is not based on Christine Blasey Ford or her testimony, but it would not have existed without that woman's bravery, her calm dherence to the facts, and her willingness to relive one of the worst moments of her life to help America save itself from itself. Her actions didn't work, but they still mattered. And maybe that's enough, in our fervent hope that the next generation gets it right. (Acknowledgments 340)

Content Warnings

solenekeleroux's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

cgsunit's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I felt angry while reading so much of the book, but the kind of anger that lights the fires of change. The kind of anger that comes from understanding the ignoring and the forgetting. I highly recommend the book, just be prepared to feel a lot.

Content Warnings

melchncookies's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

bisexualwentworth's review against another edition

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Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

If you know me at all, then you'll know that I am currently on a quest to find good books with both dragons and queer characters, so naturally I was very excited for this one. And it definitely delivered on the sapphics + dragons front, but I'm not totally sure it delivered as a book.

When Women Were Dragons is mostly the fictional memoir of a girl named Alex who grows us just after the Mass Dragoning of the 1950s, when thousands of women spontaneously turn into dragons, many of them burning down their homes and/or eating their husbands.

Dragoning is a vehicle for female rage and for these characters to find freedom, and I thought that the actual dragon parts of the book were fascinating and compelling. Alex's story is interspersed with various news articles and studies about the dragons, and I found all of them more compelling than her actual fake memoir stuff.

It wasn't that I disliked Alex as a character. I thought that her whole arc was a fascinating study in internalized misogyny and parental abuse and gaslighting. I loved her relationship with her sister. I liked that she was a sapphic woman in STEM. If this book had been straightforward historical fiction, I probably would have liked Alex's stuff more, but I cannot express how frustrating it was to read a book about dragons where the main character doesn't believe in dragons until about 3/4 of the way through. Alex was also very Not Like Other Girls, but that was definitely the point.

I very much think the author accomplished what she set out to with this book. I just also think that it could have done a lot more.

Misc things I liked:

Sapphic polyamorous dragons!
All of the later stuff with the dragons was generally really interesting
Fuck the dad oh my god (compliments to the author)

Misc things I did not like:

Dragoning is a metaphor for menstruation for a LOT of this book. That's fine, but it made the later attempts at including trans women feel kind of hollow
Are all of the dragons white? People of color are mentioned in this book, but all the dragons we meet are former white women

Anyway, just don't expect this sapphic dragon book to actually be about the dragons and instead expect it to be about a teen girl who loves math and has massive amounts of internalized misogyny.

Content Warnings