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A review by sayoni198
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I began 2025 with a novel that I had bought 2 years ago but never read.
If a love story (a love story between a young girl and nature), a love letter to marshlands, a Bildungsroman, and a murder mystery could be perfectly packed into a novel, that would be: *Where The Crawdads Sing.*
Never have I read a story where the author breathes life and soul into every nonliving object like the lagoons, the sea, the rivulets, the shadows, and the mud, where the author gives life, personality, characteristic traits to nature more than to humans, to every tadpole, every firefly, every sea gull, every oak tree, every blade of grass, every heron, and every bird as if they are not artifacts to be conserved but a family, a community to be nurtured and live in coexistence with.
The novel explores the life of Kya, a girl who was abandoned by her whole family and grew up all alone in the marshlands and swamps of North Carolina, USA in the 1950s. She was isolated, neglected, and cast off by even the townspeople and labeled as the Marsh Girl or White trash. This made her learn how to survive on her own, make the gulls her family, and fend for herself for most of her childhood and youth. Human characters do have personalities in the novel yes, but they are mostly limited to the kind of impact (positive or negative, big or small) that they had on Kya. Or they were known by their professions or race or class. But it is the flora and fauna that play a role beyond as being the setting of the novel and are also the objective observer, witnesses to significant milestones of Kya's life, keeper of secrets, and a gateway or a glimpse to the world that *Delia Owens* (the author) has created for her readers.
Kya's complicated relationship with humanity goes beyond the Jungle Book-esque survival story of a girl literally raised by the marshlands. I say this because I have a special inclining for female survival stories because women, who are traumatized enough to expect nothing but abandonment from society and civilization, who no one imagines anything of who go on to do the things no one can imagine.
Where The Crawdads Sing is the story of such a woman.
If a love story (a love story between a young girl and nature), a love letter to marshlands, a Bildungsroman, and a murder mystery could be perfectly packed into a novel, that would be: *Where The Crawdads Sing.*
Never have I read a story where the author breathes life and soul into every nonliving object like the lagoons, the sea, the rivulets, the shadows, and the mud, where the author gives life, personality, characteristic traits to nature more than to humans, to every tadpole, every firefly, every sea gull, every oak tree, every blade of grass, every heron, and every bird as if they are not artifacts to be conserved but a family, a community to be nurtured and live in coexistence with.
The novel explores the life of Kya, a girl who was abandoned by her whole family and grew up all alone in the marshlands and swamps of North Carolina, USA in the 1950s. She was isolated, neglected, and cast off by even the townspeople and labeled as the Marsh Girl or White trash. This made her learn how to survive on her own, make the gulls her family, and fend for herself for most of her childhood and youth. Human characters do have personalities in the novel yes, but they are mostly limited to the kind of impact (positive or negative, big or small) that they had on Kya. Or they were known by their professions or race or class. But it is the flora and fauna that play a role beyond as being the setting of the novel and are also the objective observer, witnesses to significant milestones of Kya's life, keeper of secrets, and a gateway or a glimpse to the world that *Delia Owens* (the author) has created for her readers.
Kya's complicated relationship with humanity goes beyond the Jungle Book-esque survival story of a girl literally raised by the marshlands. I say this because I have a special inclining for female survival stories because women, who are traumatized enough to expect nothing but abandonment from society and civilization, who no one imagines anything of who go on to do the things no one can imagine.
Where The Crawdads Sing is the story of such a woman.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Confinement, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Abandonment
Moderate: Racism