What a pageturner

https://looneybooks79.blog/2024/10/06/where-the-crawdads-sing/

For our bookclub we were offered the chance to participate in an October book-swap-challenge. Two people in the club are paired and they had to recommend a book they love very much and the other one had to read it... I got 'Where the Crawdads sing' by Delia Owens. I was actually glad to finally have an excuse to read this book as I had it on my shelf for a while now, unread. So this was the perfect moment to read it. (Thank you, Jilka)

The 1950's, Barkley Cove, Barkley County in North Carolina. Kya Clark, better known as 'The Marsh Girl' has been living in the shed in the marsh ever since she was born. Her abusive, alcoholic father chased away everyone else in the family, starting with the mother, but Kya sticked around. For a while things got better with her father but then he left as well, leaving her all by herself at the age of seven. But even though Kya can't read, can't write and lives all by herself, she's smart and knows the marsh best. So she knows how to survive and with a little help from Jumpin' and his wife Mabel, who are living in the black community, she gets by perfectly.

There's one other who she connects with, Tate Walker. Gradually he tries to make contact with her by giving her small gifts, rare bird feathers, and then he learns her how to read and write. Both grow very close but Tate's path lies towards college so he leaves. This leads Kya into the arms of Chase Andrews. She falls in love with Chase, but she also feels something's missing in the relationship. Will she ever meet his parents, who abhor 'marsh people'.

In 1969 the body of Ash is found underneath the Fire Tower. It doesn't take long before the sheriff and his deputies are led into the direction of Kya. The twenty three year old woman is taken into custody.

I loved every minute I spent on this book. And I know there are people that hate this book. When it came out it was hyped and I am always weary for hyped books but once in a while those are some of the best stories told and there’s a reason they are hyped so much. (I’m thinking of A Little Life here as well)

And yes, there’s quite a lot of repetition in this novel about how she lives alone and has to come by and that she loves birds and feathers and the marsh very much. But I felt it necessary to have it in the story just because it added to her loneliness and to her being.

The love triangle in this story between her and the two men, Tate and Chase, is perfectly described, feels natural (especially for someone naive and estranged from people like Kya is).

Delia Owens’ writing is something else. If you read this in English you will get the North Carolinian English spoken and written as it is spoken, which needed a little time to get used to. But like Stephen King adds a Maine speech to some of his characters and Irvine Welsh and Douglas Stuart use a Scottish accent, it’s all just a matter of biting through that bullet and soon you’ll be able to read it as if you always have.

But by reading this book you want to see the birds described (this is Delia Owen’s debut novel, as she is a zoologist and wildlife scientist, which clearly shows in this novel. You feel she has knowledge of animals in the wild). I know not much of marshes in North Carolina but I kind of expected an alligator or crocodile to pop up at one point. Guess we can’t have it all.

‘Where the Crawdads sing’ could pose the question: What if Huckleberry Finn had a sister and she ended up in a John Grisham movie novel if he wrote about a love triangle that was doomed to end up in a courthouse?

Dit boek verscheen in een Nederlandse vertaling bij 'The House of Books' en is intussen ook in een pocketversie bij 'Uitgeverij Rainbow' beschikbaar.

Nogmaals bedankt aan Jilka om dit boek aan te raden en te kiezen voor me. Bedankt aan de Boekenclub Twist and Tale voor dit initiatief. Zo leest een mens eens iets anders dat al jaren in zijn kast staat. (trouwens, de andere keuzes van Jilka wil ik ook wel lezen nu)