A review by saint_eleanor
The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

This was really really good, very weird. It's a really unique way of telling the story of childhood abuse and how children often have to deal with strangers coming into their lives or their parents lives and kind of being this harbinger of neglect. The mother meets a 'crane' and they fall in love and she starts to ignore her children and just throws herself into an art piece with the crane man all the while he is abusing her. It really deeply unsettled me. 
Very well written despite being from the perspective of a teen, the language was really beautiful. I also caught bluebeard's castle vibes from the story her dad told her about the crane wife and also echoes of the green ribbon story, as in like women have these aspects to them that they want to keep just for themselves but men feel so entitled to them that they MUST know, causing eternal curse!! I really appreciated the modern setting as well, made it really creepy, the stuff w the sheep scared me!!! 

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