"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens. Book Review.

Sometimes books exceed their plot line. Sometimes the plot is conventional and predictable (boy meets girl, etc.) and sometimes we are happy with that because it meets our expectations and that's all we wanted.

But now and then there is a typical plot with atypical prose attached that makes the book so much more than its simple parts. This is one of those books.

Delia Owens has written a few non-fiction books about nature and wildlife. Her knowledge of biology and the unexplored world shows in this debut novel. (Disclaimer here: I am tired of debut novels because I find them to be trite and they writing tries too hard. This novel moved above that marker.)

The story is simple and at times very dire.  A young girl is slowly abandoned by her parents and her siblings, left to survive alone in the marshes of North Carolina. That a six year old could survive for ten years with no one and with almost nothing is a bit of a stretch but we buy into it because of the grit and determination of the young girl.  She grows into a lovely yet remote and scared young woman and attracts the attention of a couple of young men in the outskirts of her solitary world. Things get complicated, someone gets killed and thus the mystery begins. 

But Owens lets us into the world of Kya, the marsh girl and thus into the world of the marsh and the swamp and the ocean. She is at home in this world as she will never be in a civilized society, which suits her fine but also alienates her from everyone else.  "A great blue heron is the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water. And like mist, she can fade into the backdrop, all of her disappearing except the concentric circles of her lock-and-load eyes. She is a patient, solitary hunger, standing alone as long as it takes to snatch her prey. Or, eyeing her catch, she will stride forward one slow step at a time, like a predacious bridesmaid. And yet, on rare occasions she hunts on the wing, darting and diving sharply, swordlike beak in the lead."

Owens' writing is sometimes lyrical and sometimes plain, as the setting of the scenes dictate. "Here, instead of the estuaries and enormous sweeps of grass as in her marsh, clear water flowed as far as she could see through a bright and open cypress forest. Brilliant white herons and storks stood among water lilies and floating plants so green they seemed to glow. Hunched up on cypress knees as large as easy chairs, they ate pimento-cheese sandwiches and potato chips, grinning as geese glided just below their toes."  Or "At the chirp of a chipmunk she whirled around, listened keenly to the caws of crows - a language before words were, when communication was simple and clear - and wherever she went, mapped an escape route in her mind."

I really enjoyed this book and I readily forgave its few overwritten paragraphs. The portrait of a solitary girl/woman trying to survive on her own and her realization that the only power she has is within herself is moving and forceful. I am looking forward to Owens next novel.

Two thumbs up. Check it out.

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