tamaranth | 2025/102: When Women Were Dragons

2025/102: When Women Were Dragons — Kelly Barnhill

[Author's Note] I thought I was writing a story about rage. I wasn’t. There is 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. [p. 366]

Reread for Lockdown bookclub: original review here. I liked it even more the second time around, though I found myself focussing more on the silences, absences and unspoken truths of Alex's childhood than on the natural history of dragons. Interestingly, it felt a lot more hopeful when I read it in 2022 than now, nearly three years later.

Discussed with book club. Reactions were mixed. We wanted more about knots, and whether they were actually magic.