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Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

Start date: August 1, 2020

Finish date: September 15, 2020

Discussion: September 2020

Discussion leader: Kath

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September 2020

September Zoom meeting
By Kath · 2 posts · 6 views

last updated Sep 22, 2020 07:04PM

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What Members Thought

Aug 25, 2019 NancyJ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 3-read-in-2020, 5-stars, 1960s-1970s, women-in-stem, 2008-2023-favorites, sound, bwf, audio-favorites, animals, child-protagonist

Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens deserves its long held spot at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. It's a rich human story with fascinating information and subplots. The writing is beautiful, as is the audio performance. The book could have been just another tearjerker about a lonely child (which would have been good imo), but the author added so much more. This was an easy 5 star book for me.

The book is about a little girl, Kya, whose mother and siblings left, one by one, t Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens deserves its long held spot at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. It's a rich human story with fascinating information and subplots. The writing is beautiful, as is the audio performance. The book could have been just another tearjerker about a lonely child (which would have been good imo), but the author added so much more. This was an easy 5 star book for me.

The book is about a little girl, Kya, whose mother and siblings left, one by one, to get away from their father. He eventually left too. She lived in a beautiful marsh on the North Carolina shore, and eked out a living digging mussels, and fishing. She was lonely, but she thought it would be worse to get caught by the authorities. She loved living on the marsh, and she didn't want to leave the wild life.

Her friend Tate taught her to read, and he shared biology and other textbooks with her. She studied the books to learn about the plants and wildlife in her area, and to learn how a mother could leave her young. She makes detailed paintings for each species she finds. She takes her boat to a different town to visit the library, because she knows the people in her own town would shoo her away.

My favorite part of her studies was about evolutionary biology, and the instinctual drive of males (of most species) to try to maximize the chances of procreation by spreading their seed far and wide. She reads about "sneaky fuckers" - based on a real research article - about unusual strategies that male animals use to give their sperm a chance to create life. Kya humorously relates them to strategies that human males use to attract females.

When she grew older, Kya was involved with a local boy in town. and the book involves an investigation of a fall that led to his death. She becomes an easy suspect. These chapters are interspersed with Kya's chapters. The book is easy to follow as the chapters are all labeled with the dates.

The author is a well known wild life biologist, with a personal story that may have informed the murder mystery. ...more

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Oct 04, 2021 Marie rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars
There is much about this book that is beautiful, engaging, creative, original, heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, the writing is so inconsistent. Descriptions of the swamp lands and their flora and fauna are transcendent. Dialogue - of which there is a tad too much - has a stilted, clumsy feel.
I did read this straight through, though. It’s definitely compelling, and I would recommend it.

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