Hello all, welcome to my book club book. I’m not sure if I would have chosen it myself, I don’t always read the popular books, and with over 5 million copies sold worldwide (according to the front cover of my copy) I’d suggest this might be a popular book. It’s a good book, I certainly enjoyed the prose and the setting. I did not enjoy what everyone did to Kya, though, and I suspect that’s part of the point. I struggled to put it down and forgot to write any notes to jog my memory, two signs of a good book.
This book was set in the marshes in North Carolina in the fictional town of Barkley Cove. I feel it’s a love letter to the marshes, to show us how beautiful they can be. And to show us how many different types of birds, animals and grasses are resident in these marshes. The evidence here are the books Kya wrote about all the flora and fauna she knew so well.
Where the Crawdads Sing also highlights how prejudiced people can be. This mostly occurs because they don’t know the person and haven’t sat down to find out anything about them. In Kya’s case she was labelled the Marsh Girl and called marsh trash. No-one except Tate tried to understand that she’d been abandoned by all of her family one at a time since she was six years-old.
I’m wanting to show you some of the prose in this book. Opening at random I’ve got this paragraph.
At first, every few minutes, she sat up and peered through the screen. Listening for footseps in the woods. She knew the shapes of all the trees; still some seemed to dart here and there, moving with the moon. For a while she was so stiff she couldn’t swallow, but on cue, the familiar songs of tree frogs and katydids filled the night. More comforting than three blind mice with a carving knife. The darkness held an odour of sweetness, the earthy breath of frogs and salamanders who’d made it through one more stinky-hot day. The marsh snuggled in closer with a low fog, and she slept.
If I took my time I could write an essay on how much I love this paragraph and how good the prose is. You’ll have to be content with just a few words. Kya is so comforted by the marsh, it’s sights and sounds that even though she’s very much on edge she finds comfort from the songs of tree frogs and katydids. The choice of words showing how nervous she is (at this point she’s alone, at night, for the first time in her life…she’s only six!) is delightful, ‘so stiff she couldn’t swallow’, the imagery is really beautiful.
We do skip around time a bit. If I hadn’t gotten into the habit of reading the year at the beginning of each chapter I would have been really confused. In the prologue it’s 1969 and we’re introduced to the body of Chase. He’s the local lad-about-town. We see him in future chapters which take us back to the 1950s and what he’s really like.
Kya ends up at school. The truant officer catches her and takes her. She only lasts one day, the kids laughed at her so much she evaded capture by the truant officer every single time. This is really easy as she knows the marsh so well she can slip through the shadows. Just another way we’re taught about how many skills Kya has learned. They’re not necessarily the skills one needs to get along with people, but they’re good survival skills.
I loved this book. Will I read it again knowing the end? No, I don’t think so. Once is enough for me. But the way Owens put this all together I might consider reading more novels by her. I do recommend it.
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