Reviews
“The Crane Husband is a slim little novella that packs a narrative punch more intense than that of many books ten times its length. It takes well-trodden tropes and renders them specific and more sinister than they seemed in the old tales, woven through with vivid and grisly details.”—NPR
“If I had to nominate a worthy successor to Angela Carter, I would nominate Kelly Barnhill. The Crane Husband is a bloody, subversive, and brilliant reimagining of a familiar fairy tale, rendered strange and haunting.”—Laura Ruby, two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Bone Gap
“Few books have left me as haunted as Kelly Barnhill’s mesmeric The Crane Husband.”—Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author
“The incomparable Barnhill delivers this sly, confrontational retelling with masterful ease and crystalline prose, revealing, feather by feather, the very real generational threat that has always burned at the core of this ancient story.”—Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times bestselling author
“Master storyteller Kelly Barnhill offers an evocative and darkly beautiful fairy tale for the modern age in The Crane Husband. . . . Barnhill’s exceptional talent for threading together imaginative worlds and emotionally resonant characters is on full display in this updated twist on a Japanese folktale. Ultimately, it is the story’s unresolved tensions–between pragmatism and passion, family legacy and freedom, art and commerce, old and new–that succeed in making readers’ throats tighten.”—Shelf Awareness, starred review
“A fast-moving, lush story that refuses to end neatly, a story of flighty mothers and the daughters who die a little keeping their families alive. Fans of fairy-tale retellings will eat this one up.”—Booklist, starred review
“[A] grim, grown-up fairytale . . . fans of dark, surreal fantasy will be enthralled.”—Publishers Weekly
Beyond retelling a folktale, Barnhill constructs nuanced characters with conflicting motivations and loyalties . . . [and] arrives at a thought-provoking conclusion.”—Library Journal
