Review: “When Women Were Dragons” by Kelly Barnhill

When I first heard about Kelly Barnhill’s novel When Women Were Dragons, I was immediately intrigued. Using the concept of women turning into dragons as an allegory for women taking up their own space and how society responds to that was such an interesting concept to me. Unfortunately, while it is a good book and its feminist messages resonated with me, I ended up being a little disappointed in the overall experience.

Alex Green is just a normal girl living in 1950s America with her mom and dad. She loves her family and her aunt Marla and cousin Beatrice. Everything in her life changes, though, when the Mass Dragoning happens. One day in 1955, hundreds of thousands of women, including her aunt Marla, turn into dragons and take to the skies. Now, Alex has a sister Beatrice, her aunt never existed, and all of society acts as if the entire event never happened and that dragons are not real. The government cracks down on scientists investigating the event, schools are barred from teaching students about it, and Alex’s own mother refuses to acknowledge it, going so far as to punish Alex and her cousin (sister) for any mention of the word dragon. As Alex grows up and the evidence of dragons continues to mount, she will have to confront the truth that she and the entire country have worked so hard to repress.

When Women Were Dragons is a deeply personal exploration of feminist themes that are just as important now as they were in the time in which the story takes place. By telling the story through Alex’s memoir, we get an up close perspective on the pain, anger, and trauma caused when society insists on ignoring the truth and keeping women small and in their place. There are so many moments in which you feel terrible for Alex and what she is having to go through. It’s painful to watch her independent spirit get crushed under the weight of denial and the way she is treated because she is a woman. It hurts to see her become her mother, the very thing she wanted to rebel against, because that role is thrust upon her. The book also does a good job exploring how hard it is to deprogram yourself when confronted with the truth that you’ve had to bury for so long. Because we get to see all of these things happen through Alex’s perspective and get to see her comment on them, these ideas shine through in a very real and resonant way. The line “there is freedom in forgetting”, something that Alex says to herself time and time again and eventually has to unpack, will stick with me for a while.

That being said, there are issues with the book that stopped me from truly loving it. The book leaves a lot of interesting questions surrounding dragoning completely unanswered. The reason that women change into dragons and why it happens at certain times is left mostly to vague speculation. It could be the case that for each woman the reason is different, but it’s still frustrating that the book doesn’t explore this notion further. Other questions like why Alex never turned and why the dragons left and then eventually came back are also left unanswered, leaving me frustrated. I just think so much more could have been done with the premise of “women turn into dragons” than what we were given here.

For all of its powerful messages and deeply resonant moments, the story does get bogged down at times by its slow pace. There are entire chapters that feel like they accomplish nothing or are simply repeating concepts that were already well covered. This ends up lessening the impact of some of the more emotionally gut-punchy moments near the end of the story. It also made the book feel like a padded out short story or novella rather than a fully-fleshed out novel.

All that being said, I still mostly enjoyed my time with When Women Were Dragons and think it does a decent job exploring timely and important themes that deserve attention. I still think that it's a good book and that there are readers out there who will love it. I also commend the author for being explicit in the inclusion of queer and transgender women. Alex and several supporting characters are sapphic and it is mentioned multiple times that AMAB transgender people also turn into dragons. In fact, it’s completely reasonable to read this as a queer story and that the women change into dragons because they are queer and want to live their lives as such (although this is undercut by the fact that Alex, an out lesbian, never feels the call to change). I just wish the story was either a little shorter or faster paced and delved deeper into the magic/science of its premise.