(Dear ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’, on paper I’m forced to give you only five stars. I want you to know that if I could, I’d give you all the stars in the sky.) If you haven’t read Delia Owens’ debut novel, I suggest you drop everything you are doing and curl up with the book. I’m saying this because I regret not doing so when my friend recommended it almost a year ago. He told me it was perhaps the most beautiful book he’d read. And he is a voracious reader.
I wanted to kick myself for buying the book and letting it sit on the shelf for so long before eventually picking it up. I should have gotten around to it sooner; I berated myself over and over again. Everything about the book is gorgeous—the writing, the setting, the characters, the descriptions of nature and the marsh, and the way the author has woven suspense into the story.
A coming-of-age story of a girl named Kya Clark who lives alone in a shack in the swamplands of North Carolina after being abandoned by her family, Where the Crawdads Sing is a captivating read. Owens is a retired wildlife biologist and she intersperses the story with a lot of information about nature’s various elements, blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction in places. But at no point does it seem like she’s lecturing; nor do the descriptions take away from the story.
Instead, she enthralls and educates you at the same time. Apparently, the book has been criticized for being too trope-heavy. Some say that a courtroom drama can’t exist alongside life in the marshes. But it sold more than four million copies in a little over a year since its publication, foreign rights were sold in 41 countries, and it’s also being adapted into a film being produced by Reese Witherspoon.
Kya is a fascinating and lovable character. She teaches herself to survive in a hostile world and manages to get by just fine. There are some kind people who help her along the way—like a shopkeeper who buys the fish she catches and a boy named Tate who teaches her to read—who reinforce your belief in humanity.
Set in the 1950s and 60s, the book also deals heavily with racism, with a few uplifting scenes like a judge declaring people can sit wherever they want in his courtroom and that those who have a problem with it can leave. It opens with a body being discovered in the swamp and then jumps back and forth between the past and the present to tell a story of loneliness and courage. You will be rooting for Kya all the way through and the end will leave you happy and heartbroken at the same time.
