Notes from the Shelf

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When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill is a 367-page historical fiction/fantasy with magical realism sprinkled in. The book focuses on Alex Green, a young girl who lives in a similar world to us except for the Mass Dragoning event in 1955. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons and left a fiery trail of destruction before taking to the skies. Was it their choice to become dragons? Why did Alex’s Aunt Marla transform but her mother didn’t? Alex doesn’t know and it’s taboo to ask. Forced into silence, Alex still must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a more protective mother, an absent father, and the upsetting insistence that her aunt never existed.

The novel explores rage, memory and the tyranny of forced limitations. It exposes a world that would like to keep women small, and looks at what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.

I wanted to like this book; the premise sounds awesome and who doesn’t like dragons? But it really fell flat to me and felt like the author’s opinions were hitting me over the head, telling me how to feel, which is just angry apparently. Also, I felt like there was too much going on that the point was muddled. I loved Aunt Marla, and I wish there was more to her story. I was really disappointed that the way the dragons felt when they transformed wasn’t described at all, and also in the end the dragons just return to homemaking and home schooling without anything really changing within society.

I give When Women Were Dragons 3 stars.

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