Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Corsair, 2019, 376 p.

People like stories. That is why the novel as a form exists after all. So I can see why this struck a chord with so many readers. It is the tale of Catherine Danielle Clark (Kya,) growing up living in a shack in a North Carolina marsh. And it is a compelling one. Kya is abandoned first by her elder siblings, then her mother (too many blows from her wastrel drunken sot of a husband, Kya’s father) then her brother nearest in age, Jodie, and finally her father; left to bring herself up alone, with only the marsh wildlife and plants to engage her interest. Subject to prejudice, vilified as dirty and ‘trash’, she has only the local, black, seller of bait, supplies and motor-boat fuel, Jumpin’ Jackson, and his wife Mabel, to look out for her, plus later, of course, Tate Walker, a few years older, a friend of the family in the (mildly) better times when her mother was still around. It is a tale of betrayal, loneliness, love, (a bit of) sex and, since we start with the discovery of a body, death. It has things going for it then.

And yet. Perhaps I’m seeing this from a reviewing perspective or even of that of a novelist myself but as a novel I found it deeply flawed.

The body is that of Chase Andrews, quondam local quarterback and lad about town (or whatever the US equivalent is) but pillar of the establishment. He has fallen – or been pushed – from a deserted building known as the fire tower. The absence of footprints round the body (his included) make the local sheriff suspicious. Revelations of Kya’s involvement with Chase mean she becomes the prime suspect.

Given Kya is the focal character our sympathies naturally lean to her side and if she has committed murder, there is not much in Owens’s portrayal of her to lead us to believe she could have carried out the elaborate deception necessary for that. She certainly has motive, a woman scorned always has motive, but her reclusive nature as the Marsh Girl, out where the crawdads sing (Tate tells her the phrase means “Far in the bush where the critters are wild, still behaving like critters”) and her reticence as regards contact with other humans, act as counterweights.

Despite only one day of schooling – humiliated by being unable to spell ‘dog’ she never went back – she becomes a self-taught expert on the marsh fauna and flora and paints exquisite representations of its wildlife. Her friendship with Tate, the only one who understands her deep connection with the marsh, the person who taught her to read – remarkably quickly it has to be said – and encouraged her to send her paintings to a publisher and so responsible for her later financial security, is her anchor until he too leaves her behind to go to College and her loneliness eventually leads her to succumb to the doomed attraction of Chase.

This tale of early 1960s North Carolina has echoes of To Kill a Mockingbird what with the racial prejudice (there is a Colored [sic] Town separate from Barkley Cove,) the class divisions and the courtroom scenes.However, it is anything but as well written. It relies too often on coincidence and has problems with structure and sequencing along with individual sections morphing from past to present tense for no good reason. Witnesses come forward at convenient times for the narrative rather than organically as they would have done. For two of these Owens lets the reader know their testimony exists and is potentially damning but does not reveal it then and there, instead waiting a few chapters to let us see the scene concerned from Kya’s viewpoint. I suppose you could call it backshadowing (in essence the whole book from the body’s discovery in the prologue till Kya’s arrest is backshadowing) but it is really an artificial creation of tension not fair on the reader. Then there are the frequent passages of poetry, especially that of Amanda Hamilton, which strike an off-note. Owens has her reasons for these but only unfurls them at the end as a deus ex machina.

Some minor characters are less than convincing. Chase’s mother Patti Love Andrews is supposed to have thought she had a strong bond with her son but is said to be shocked to discover he had intimate dealings with Kya. This does not ring at all true. A woman like her would know exactly how a son brought up with his privileges would behave towards those he thought beneath him – especially to women, even more especially to ‘trash’.

Extracts from Kya’s reading on biological topics – for example “one article on reproductive strategies was titled ‘Sneaky Fuckers’” – feel as if they are an interpolation from a different novel entirely but ensure Kya is conversant with the varied tactics of the animal mating game. She tells Jodie, finally returned to see how she is faring, “Most men go from one female to the next. The unworthy ones strut about, pulling you in with falsehoods,” but this comes across as Owens speaking, not Kya. Often in sections relating to Kya’s state of mind, human behaviour is described in terms of biological reductionism – even in the hierarchy of the courtroom.

Some aspects of the contributions to her personality are outlined when Kya says to Jodie, “I never hated people. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harrassed me. They attacked me.”

As a defendant in her trial Kya is all but a blank to us, though. Yet the narration is from an omniscient third person, we ought to have access to her deepest thoughts. This is not unreliable as such but is profoundly disingenuous (and there are times too when Owens is a bit too eager to tell the reader how to interpret what has been read.)

Perhaps it was with an eye to the film rights (or even thoughts of To Kill a Mockingbird) that Owens chose to make the trial her focus. A trial after all has jeopardy (Owens emphasises the jeopardy,) conflict and drama. But that focus imbalances the novel. The story here is not the trial. Instead it is that of a lonely girl struggling to keep herself alive and make her way in a world to which she is ill-suited and for which she is ill-prepared. And of humans’ capacity for denigrating and despising the other. The murder aspect is incidental to this but is the hook on which Owens hangs the book. And in its dénouement I could not escape the impression that Owens was so determined to have a revelation/tying up of loose ends in her final chapter that it warped all that came before it.

There are things to appreciate in this novel but its central metaphor is laboured, almost trite. Yes, humans are the expressions of their genes. But humans are more than that. And it is the more than that that the novel, at its best, illumines and portrays. Where the Crawdads Sing does that peripherally at best.

It is by no means a bad book. In some respects it is a very good book, though without ever touching the heights. It will probably make a good film though.

Pedant’s corner:- ‘Time interval’ later/within ‘time interval’ count: 17. Otherwise; “Her overalls pockets” (that’s a possessive, hence, ‘her overalls’ pockets’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, indentions (indentations,) “Kya wondered who started using the word cell instead of cage. There must have been a moment in time when humanity demanded this shift.” (Well, no. The word cell does not necessarily mean a place of incarceration. It is a single, repeatable unit, found among others of its kind, as in prisons, but also in batteries and in living things; a cage is never anything other than a place of confinement,) “the sheriff itn’t so sure” (‘itn’t?’Is that North Carolinan dialect; or a misprint for ‘isn’t?’) “bused to Barkley” (bussed.)

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  1. Bronte Jornod

    I agree with you completely. Bravo.

  2. jackdeighton

    Bronte Jornod,
    Thanks. I can only call them as I see them.
    But it seems this is a love/hate novel. It has many supporters but I’ve had conversations with other people who were less than delighted with this book.
    Thanks for looking in and commenting.

  3. Not Just Me, Then – A Son of the Rock -- Jack Deighton

    […] my review of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens I suggested that Owens may have had an eye on the film […]

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