Kavi Reads

The Reese Witherspoon Book Club is a great place to get some good book suggestions. She tends to keep the genres wide enough that everyone can find some books they would like. However, a lot of times, her picks are so widely popular that it can be months before you can get the book from a library. Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was the September 2018 pick. So, a lot of people by now have read and reviewed this book, to the point that it currently has 4.8 stars on Amazon with over seven thousand reviews and has remained on their top charts for 28 weeks now, currently at number one. When I finally got a chance to listen to its audiobook, I didn’t know all this, nor did I know anything else about the book. So I went in pretty blind. And man did it open my eyes.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes we can’t help it. There’s been plenty of books that I’ve picked simply because their covers attracted me while I was looking around in the library. Similarly, we should not judge a human being by their appearance. But that can also be hard to do. Prejudice can come into play in surprising ways, often unconsciously. But for the people of Barkley Cove, there was nothing subtle or unconscious about their resentment towards the Marsh Girl. Some said she hunts with wolves at night. Some said she’s the missing link between the ape and man. No one, except a very select few, saw the reality that she was simply a child without a family, surviving on her own in the wilderness. Where The Crawdads Sing is a story about that child, Kya, and how she grew up alone in the marsh to be a most unusual but fascinating woman. Also tied into the story are Kya’s search of love, struggle to form real human connections, passion for her marsh, interest in literature and biology, and the murder of the town’s most popular young man that she gets arrested for.

As it began, the novel had two stories running in parallel. One is set in 1969, where two boys have just discovered the body of Chase Andrews, the only son of the richest couple in town lying in the marsh and the investigation that the town Sheriff begins to find out what happened. The other starts in 1952, where a six-year-old Kya is living with her family in the marsh, separate from the rest of the town. Tired of her drunk, abusive father, Kya’s mother leaves, quickly followed by her brother and two sisters, abandoning Kya. This part of the story then follows her growth and survival in the marsh, first with the help of the little money her father brings in, and later any money she is able to make digging up mussels or catching and smoking fish and selling it to a local shop. This part of the story starts in 1952 but later catches up with the 1969 murder and continues as one unified story, occasionally making flashbacks. Progressing the story is this way has the wonderful advantage of moving along the murder investigation without, at any point, spending too much time away from Kya.

From the very beginning of the book, I was entranced by Kya’s character. She was a very vivid and original character. From the environment she grew up in, I was reminded a lot Jeannette Walls’s childhood (see The Glass Castle), except a bit more brutal. From the very beginning, isolation was Kya’s only friend. As an introvert, I could relate to certain aspects of her behaviour, but Kya took introversion to a whole new level. She would go out of her way to avoid people. Her first instinct was to hide whenever she heard voices. She was able to hide from and fool government officers, like ones from child protective services or the census board, for years, having no interest in going to a foster home or school. But there was always a certain charm and innocence hidden in her behaviour. Already a shy person, she was never treated like an equal by her townspeople. Some resented her saying she was “marsh trash”, others simply ignored her. No matter what, they stayed away. She spent exactly one day at school before even that ended for good, despite the prospect of a free lunch every day.

But that does not mean Kya’s life was friendless. Jumpin’, the store-owner she bought gas and supplies from and sold mussels to became a father-figure in her life. He and his wife Mable, with the help of their Church group, often helped Kya out giving her things like clothes and food. And despite her isolation from the town, she gained the attention from two town boys, a working-class, kind boy named Tate and the arrogant, posh boy named Chase (the one who got murdered later). It was Tate that made the biggest contribution in Kya’s life by teaching her how to read. Even before she could read, Kya was a bona fide naturalist and artist, making records of the marsh in her own paintings and collections. But the books Tate brought her opened up a whole new world for her. She suddenly had access to a vast repository of knowledge. She became a prolific reader and furthered her knowledge in biology and natural sciences.

Along with being a story about Kya, Where The Crawdads Sing was also the story of a murder. Here, as I was reading the book, I was beginning to feel a bit disappointed. As a murder mystery, the novel was starting to feel quite lacking in the thrill that I usually would expect from one. Even the trial that took place after Kya’s arrest seemed lacklustre, with facts we, the reader, already knew were just being parroted in front of a judge. But I soon realised, the book was never truly meant to be a murder mystery. The story never lost its focus from Kya. Though highly significant, the murder was just another event in her peculiar life. And I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.