Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
‣ slow read, bildungsroman
‣ love story a lil bit
‣ lots of nature descriptions
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"Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?"
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This novel has been sitting on my bookshelf for what feels like forever, just sitting there, being all daunting. Writing this review has been about the same. Don't get me wrong—it's a great book. Delia Owens is a phenomenal writer. The language in the novel functions for the town of Barkley Cove, and if it doesn't function for the reader, they must "do the work to get the work" (in the words of Elizabeth Acevedo). While I am not at all a fan of nature (a Brooklyn girl, through and through), the marsh so beloved by our protagonist is undeniably wondrous. Through Kya's eyes, Delia reflects on every detail of the marsh, down to the blades of grass so often left unnoticed.
I enjoy novels that are a bildungsroman but refrain from being young adult fiction, and this is a good example of one. In Where the Crawdads Sing, we meet Kya in 1952, just before her seventh birthday. Though Kya is a little girl in very rough circumstances, Delia writes about her in away that doesn't evoke pity, but rather, heart. Her worries and her hurt are the same as mine, she in the lonesome marsh and I in crowded streets of New York.
As Kya ages, we see how smart she is. Her interest in her surroundings surpasses the norm. In the face of her unwavering loneliness, Kya is equally assiduous. She loves the marsh so delicately, and it loves her in return. In her relationships with men, Kya learns to fall in, to feel hurt, to be guarded, to be open, to be hurt again, to forgive, to remember. She learns the weight and reason behind big decisions, and makes some of her own. She is kind behind the walls she puts up, and manages to form her own chosen family.
Where the Crawdads Sing is a slow read—at least it was for me—but I didn't ever get bored of it. The book was daunting for me because I didn't think I'd relate to it. Writing this review was daunting because, honestly, I didn't. While I saw myself in Kya, and her in me, we're very different women. We experience completely different lives, and I think many readers will also feel that distance. However, Delia writes in such a way that it doesn't matter that her story isn't part of your story. What matters is that Kya's story needed to be told, and you are there to take part in it.