Publishers Weekly
★ 01/08/2018
The eight short stories and one novella in Newbery Medalist Barnhill’s collection are haunting and beautifully told. Each tale features characters, mostly girls and women, who chafe at rules and rebel in ways both quiet and extraordinary. The titular widow of “Mrs. Sorenson and the Sasquatch” dismays her neighbors by taking up with a huge furry humanoid. In “Elegy to Gabrielle—Patron Saint of Healers, Whores, and Righteous Thieves,” the young pirate Gabrielle Belain frees slaves and is defiant to the end. The poignant novella “The Unlicensed Magician” tells the story of a young woman, known as the Sparrow, as she quietly brings prosperity to her small town despite her country’s murderous dictator. Barnhill skillfully incorporates fairy tale elements and makes them freshly unsettling: many of her heroines have unusual effects on animals, and the title character of “Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake” faintly echoes Cinderella’s dead mother. Each story is written in intensely poetic language that can exult or disturb, sometimes within the same sentence, and evokes a dreamlike, enchanted mood that lingers in the reader’s mind. These tales are made to be reread and savored. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
[A] playful, witchy collection of addictive tales.”—O, The Oprah Magazine “Kelly Barnhill won the prestigious Newbery Medal last year for her children's story The Girl Who Drank The Moon. Her new book Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories is just as fantastical but delves into darker, more complicated worlds for adult readers.”—Lulu Garcia-Navarro for NPR “Finds the author at her most poignant and surprising.”—Entertainment Weekly “The eight short stories and one novella in Newbery Medalist Barnhill’s collection are haunting and beautifully told . . . Each story is written in intensely poetic language that can exult or disturb, sometimes within the same sentence, and evokes a dreamlike, enchanted mood that lingers in the reader’s mind. These tales are made to be reread and savored.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “Barnhill’s exquisite prose leads readers down many fantastical roads . . . the themes of love, grief, power, and hope tie the individual stories together in a masterly way . . . Barnhill highlights fantasy’s breadth with unusual settings and extraordinary characters living outside of the realm of reality. A magical volume for fans of the genre.”—Library Journal, starred review “Exquisite . . . Perfect for readers of the weird and fantastically wonderful. Give to fans of Alice Hoffman, Laura Ruby, and Seanan McGuire.”—School Library Journal "Newbery medalist Barnhill dazzles in her short story collection for adults . . . This is a well-crafted short story collection featuring elements of magic realism while touching on the themes of love, grief, hope, jealousy, and more. Fantasy readers—especially fans of Neil Gaiman or even Kelly Link—will appreciate this spellbinding collection."—Booklist "Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury or Angela Carter . . . Whether Barnhill's settings are contemporary, historical, or dystopian, she mixes the feeling of fairy tales with the psychological preoccupations of literary fiction."—Kirkus Reviews “The fabulous, the speculative and the surreal make up the stories in Barnhill’s marvelous collection, Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories . . . but it’s Barnhill’s sly humor and her poetic prowess with imagery and metaphor that enchanted me most of all.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “These eight fantastical, magical stories and a novella are filled with images of flying and wings, on humans, ghosts and insects . . . These are compelling, sometimes baffling, always interesting stories in which people disappear, babies are born and taken by the government, and girls and women are bold and sometimes frightening. There’s a very blurry line between the ‘real’ and the imagined.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press “[Barnhill] shows us things that are not real, but are nevertheless true; things that we know to be important even though they may not exist. To put it another way, she writes fairy tales. Fairy tales written in lush, insistent, dreamlike prose. Yarns that the Grimm brothers never dreamed. Some of her stories are written to be read by children, but all of her stories are for adults. Kelly Barnhill is astonishingly good at this.” —Pete Hautman for Electric Literature “A breathtaking collection of tales that traverse the intersection of reality and fantasy, all the while reminding us of the very values that make us human.”—PopSugar “Kelly Barnhill follows up her Newbery Medal-winning The Girl Who Drank the Moon in a most unexpected fashion: with a collection of fantastical short stories for older teens and adults. Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories is the kind of writing that does not rely on shock and awe, but rather on fascinating characters doing unusual things in evocative settings. It is certain to broaden Barnhill’s fan base and should draw favorable comparisons to Neil Gaiman with ease. Prepare for a wholly unique reading experience with this collection, one to be savored with each luscious page.”—Locus “Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories is entertainingly subversive and often questions normative culture . . . Barnhill's work pushes beyond the confines of the fantasy genre and makes the reader want to believe that magic is part of our lives. Indeed the themes in this collection of short stories develop basic human responses such as love, death, and jealousy. But each story unfolds a darker and supernatural element to these emotions. Readers will easily identify with these characters and become engrossed in the mysteries of the supernatural.”—Pop Matters “[A] fierce new collection for adults . . . magical tales of characters seeking their own paths even though society would rather they meet certain expectations. These characters are unexpected and fresh: Readers will meet a woman who loves a Sasquatch, a guilt-stricken witch, and an invisible girl.”—Bookish
Library Journal - Audio
05/01/2018
The stories in this collection by Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) mainly center on transgressive women: pirate queens, fugitive sorcerers, and casters of dangerous spells. A lonely widow finds companionship with an affectionate monster, a witch's spell for beauty backfires in unexpected ways, and a young woman inherits both supernatural powers and a pirate crew. There's a fairy-tale tone to many of the offerings; even the stories set in modern America maintain an otherworldliness. The two stories that don't feature female protagonists are "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through," a slowly unfolding ghost story told in letters between a young soldier and his betrothed that is literally and figuratively haunting, and "The Insect and the Astronomer" in which an educated and lonely insect scientist seeks his counterpart. The latter half(ish) of the book consists of "The Unlicensed Magician," a tale about a country under the heel of an immortal minister who uses children born with magic to power his obsession with eternal life and the one nearly invisible girl who evaded his agents at birth. English voice actor John Lee narrates with gravitas and intensity, with occasional doses of humor that throw the strangeness into sharp relief. VERDICT Readers who enjoy their fantasy with a dose of weirdness and atmosphere—Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury come to mind—will enjoy this collection. ["In her debut short story collection for adults, YA author Barnhill highlights fantasy's breadth with unusual settings and extraordinary characters living outside of the realm of reality. A magical volume for fans of the genre": LJ 2/1/18 starred review of the Algonquin hc.]—Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta
School Library Journal
05/01/2018
The Newbery Award—winning author expertly pens eight exquisite short stories and one heartrending novella for this collection. The fantasy elements Barnhill is known for is on display here, but this work contains even more twists and turns than her children's books as well as the occasional tale dealing with topics such as marriage and divorce. Most of the characters are full of love; it magically spills out of them as they heal, hope, and make the world a better place. The novella, "The Unlicensed Magician," focuses on magical children who are sacrificed to the Minister until one special infant survives to grow into a teenager who defies him. Though brief, the title entry packs a punch, describing four women who murder children and create natural disasters. Teens will find themselves marking well-worded passages in these pieces that are reminiscent of fairy tales and written with a deliberate and delicate turn-of-phrase. VERDICT Perfect for readers of the weird and fantastically wonderful. Give to fans of Alice Hoffman, Laura Ruby, and Seanan McGuire.—Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL
Kirkus Reviews
2017-11-28
Lyrical stories about love, sex, and death from Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon, 2016, etc.).A Midwestern widow who loves animals rejects her mortal suitors to run off with a Sasquatch. A refugee from the London Blitz, exchanging letters with her husband, slowly comes to understand that she is, in fact, already dead. A professor who happens to be an insect and the last of his kind finds himself drawn to an astronomer who has never been alive. With lush imagery reminiscent of Ray Bradbury or Angela Carter, Barnhill explores passionate relationships frustrated by greed, malice, and—ultimately—death. In her world, witches are as likely to be holy women who heal the sick and make common ground with prostitutes ("Elegy to Gabrielle—Patron Saint of Healers, Whores, and Righteous Thieves") as they are to be evil stepmothers who steal husbands ("Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake"). She has an affinity for the symbolic vocabulary of contemporary literary fantasy—automata, insects, taxidermy—which can feel overused, though she deploys it skillfully enough. Her language, poetic and evocative at its best, can sometimes cloy, but the fire and bitterness of her themes generally cut the sweetness.Whether Barnhill's settings are contemporary, historical, or dystopian, she mixes the feeling of fairy tales with the psychological preoccupations of literary fiction; her longer stories tend to be her better ones, allowing her room to develop her characters from symbols to people.
