Jun 4

Jun 4 A really good read - Where The Crawdads Sing

Where The Crawdads Sing is an engrossing, heartbreaking, beautiful read

There are books that grab you from the first page (like this one). Then there are books that take their time to weave their way into your heart and mind, but once they have, they leave an indelible impression. Where The Crawdads Sing is one of those books.

A mysterious watery world

It opens by transporting you to the mysterious, watery, swamp marshlands of the coast of North Carolina in the late sixties, and almost casually presents you with a dead body lying in the fetid mud of the low-lying bog.

But that is where the story is heading to. For its beginning you’re taken back 16 years to meet six year old Kya, living in a decrepit, rundown shack with her parents and four siblings on the very edge of this unforgiving but also deeply beautiful, watery landscape, and on the very margins of society.

Abandoned and alone

In a heartbreaking series of abandonments, Kya is left entirely alone. The struggles she endures to fend for herself, learn the ways of the marshes, their snaking inlets, and the animals that inhabit both the land and the water, are described in beautifully vivid, movingly raw detail.

Your heart aches for the deserted little girl, and you will her through the life she slowly, painstakingly builds for herself as she grows into a reclusive, shy but fiercely observant and determined teenager.

Suspicious locals

Befriended by a couple from the nearest village, Kya is shunned by most of the other inhabitants who refer to her as The Marsh Girl and view her with a mixture of suspicion and mistrust.

Over time, two young men in the community also take an interest in Kya. Tate sees her for the sensitive, inquisitive, insightful person she is and gently earns her trust and friendship, opening up her lonely life to the companionship, and then the possibility of love, that she achingly misses.

The other, Chase, the handsome, popular local stud is drawn to Kya’s mysteriousness and wild, burgeoning beauty.

Each of them offer Kya tantalising glimpses, and promises, of a life that could be more than she imagined.

An unexplained death

But it is Chase’s body that is lying in the mud at the start of the book, and the investigation into his death is woven through the telling of Kya’s story, eventually reaching a dramatic, heart-stopping climax and a truly surprising finale.

Delia Owens, author of Where The Crawdads Sing

It’s remarkable that Where The Crawdads Sing is author Delia Owens’s first novel (she has co-authored three bestselling non-fiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa).

The sure-footed way she combines a compelling murder-mystery with a tender coming-of-age story, and a beautiful evocation of a wild and strange landscape, will make you hope this is not her last fiction outing as much as it did me.

Latecomer

I’m late to the party with this beautiful book, which has already sold over 5 million copies and been optioned (by Reece Witherspoon’s production company) for what has all the ingredients to make a tremendous film.

But don’t wait for that to happen, get a copy now and discover a world and a girl who you won’t want leave behind when their story is done.