The language is both magical and matter-of-fact, as in this passage from the first chapter, when Alex is four years old:įinally, because I had come to see the little old lady, and I was nothing if not a specifically purposeful little girl, I cleared my throat and demanded to know where she was. The only magical element in the story is the existence of dragons, which fits seamlessly into the themes of the history. The writing in this book is just stunning. Dragoning in this story is more of a metaphor than anything else – a spectacularly gorgeous and thrilling metaphor. She also deals with trauma caused by emotional abuse from her father, the pressures of a world that wants her to live a life she hates, and a legacy of abandonment from women who have dragoned and left her behind. Most of the plot involves her struggles to care for her sister and to get to college despite a complete lack of familial support. Like her mother, Alex is a brilliant mathematician who is relentlessly pressured by society to leave math to men and instead to devote herself to raising her younger sister and staying within the domestic sphere. In this coming-of-age story, Alex grows up with the constant mystery of why some women dragon and what the phenomenon means for her family and her future.Īlex’s story, dragons aside, is a pretty straightforward coming of age tale taking her from her childhood through her early twenties, and revisiting her as an older woman. But across the country, women are turning into dragons and flying away in a process allied simply ‘dragoning’ – a few at a time, usually, with the exception of “the Mass Dragoning 0f 1955 – also known as The Day of Missing Mothers”. People are reluctant to even mention them, and the government suppresses news and research about them. This is not a romance, but it will appeal to those who like women’s history with a side of rage and fantasy.Īlex Green is a little girl in 1950’s middle America when she first sees a dragon. I couldn’t stop reading it even when it made my chest hurt, and I’ve thought of it so many times since, with scenes popping into my head as though I just read them yesterday. When Women Were Dragons is unlike any other book I’ve read and I found to be painful, joyous, and liberating.

Genre: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy

When women were dragons a novel reviews