The Crane Wife

Everything about this books suggests that I should hate it. Magical realism? Yup, hate that. Contemporary? Ew, why would I read about people who could be my neighbors unless it's true crime? Yet somehow The Crane Wife found its way onto my list of favorite books of the year. I connected with Amanda on a molecular level (despite having vastly differing opinions). Surprisingly I also really loved the variety of writing styles used and feel they affected the tone in an appropriate and noticeable way. In the end, did I get it? I don't know, but I loved it.

I liked it at first. In the middle, a little less. By the end, I was annoyed and bewildered.


(That's the honest-to-goodness truth. You can stop reading now, if you want. Nobody is making you read the rest of this little review. Or you can simply discount it as the thoughts of one reader. It's okay. Warning: lots and lots of spoilers.)


Let me tell you a little more, just in case you are thinking about reading this book and those three sentences are not enough.


I liked the imagery at first. The mysterious arrival of a crane outside George Duncan's door. The subsequent arrival the next day of Kumika at his workplace. George and Kumika's combined art that caused such a stir.


But then I became confused. It's very likely that it is just me. A volcano. Plunging fingers into a warrior and stopping his heart. George going out on Kumiko with his daughter's difficult friend.

Dreams A fire.


On and on. I couldn't fill in the spaces between the images. And I gave up caring about these characters, though I did manage to force myself to read through to the end. In the hope (unrealized) that the story would make some sort of sense by the conclusion.


I'll tell you that this is not the review I wanted to write, not the review I thought I'd be writing when I was happily reading along, a few pages in.


And I'd love it if you could ‘splain to me what I'm missing. Maybe that's all it would take.

The Crane Wife is a modern retelling of a Japanese folktale that simply didn't work for me. Although I am unfamiliar with the original folktale, it seems that what Ness has tried to do here, instead of simply retelling the tale in a modern setting, is create two parallel plots, the main one closer to ‘reality' and the other alternating plot closer to the fantastical fairy tale. Magical realism can be very difficult to get right and unfortunately for this novel the distinction between the real and fantastical elements blurred so much towards the end, without any proper development or explanation, that I was left utterly confused. I have no clue how some of the ‘real' characters corresponded with their fantastical counterparts.

However, even before this muddled ending, the novel was struggling to reach my expectations. Firstly, I had problems with most of the characters. George, the main protagonist, is a typical, annoying nice guy™, in other words one of those guys who expects to be rewarded by women for their “niceness”. But most disappointingly was Kumiko, the ‘crane' of the story. She was really never developed as a character at all other than being “mysterious” and “alluring”. It just seems really suspect to me that a female, Japanese character's only purpose is to be a mystery to the main white guy. I don't know if Ness was predicting this kind of criticism when he wrote this exchange between George and another POC character:

Mehmet: “This isn't some mysterious allure of the East thing you've got with this woman, is it? Because I'd find that, like, amazingly offensive.”George: “You're from the East, Mehmet, and I find you neither mysterious nor alluring.”