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A review by marywahlmeierbracciano
The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
5.0
Kelly Barnhill has molded an ancient Japanese folktale into a semi-futuristic Midwestern warning. A small family lives on a plot of land with a barn—the adjacent farmland is owned by a conglomerate which uses automated machines to grow monocultures, fields patrolled by drones to keep even the birds away. The widow is a prolific textile artist whose woven tapestries elicit extreme responses, her current work-in-progress inspired by her live-in lover, a foreboding crane. Narrated by the woman’s fifteen-year-old daughter, this visceral retelling explores the limitations of domestic life, the contradictions of love, and the price of inheritance.
Moderate: Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Gun violence, Terminal illness, and Murder