3.5 Stars
This book is a
coming-of-age story, a survival tale, a romance, and a murder mystery so it is
not surprising that a film adaptation has been announced.
Kya Clark, by the time
she is 10 years old, has been abandoned by her entire family so she grows up
alone in the marshes of coastal North Carolina.
She learns to be self-sufficient and spends her time observing flora and
fauna around her; seagulls are her closest companions: Nature “nurtured, tutored, and protected her
when no one else would.” She avoids the
nearby town of Barkley Cove where she is ridiculed; most people know her only
as the Swamp Girl. Once left by her family, she has regular contact
with only three people: she is helped by
Jumpin’ and his wife Mabel from Colored Town and by Tate Walker, a young man
who befriends her and teaches her to read.
The story of Kya’s
youth and young adulthood (1952 – 1969) is interspersed with a 1969 murder
investigation started when the body of a man is discovered. Kya soon becomes a suspect.
One cannot help but
feel sympathy for Kya. She describes her
life as being “defined by rejections.”
Her mother, her siblings, and eventually her hard-drinking, abusive
father leave her. She witnesses girls her
age having fun together, knowing that she will never be invited to join
them. When she does manage to later have
relationships with others, they also eventually abandon her. She realizes that “the gulls, the heron, the
shack. The marsh is all the family I
got.’”
Readers looking for a
strong female protagonist can certainly find her here. Kya is intelligent, resilient, courageous,
and determined. Considering her lack of
formal education, her accomplishments might seem rather implausible, but then I
remembered Tara Westover’s memoir Educated
which shows how someone from an impoverished background can have extraordinary
success. There are in fact a number of
similarities between Tara and Kya: both
live in remote areas under harsh conditions with absent or unreliable
parents.
Characterization is
not the strongest element because characters tend to be either good or
bad. For instance, there’s the kind
teenage boy who goes of his way to help Kya
contrasted with the selfish teenage boy who takes advantage of Kya. The nurturing black couple and the lawyer who
comes out of retirement to defend Kya are almost too good to be
believable.
There are aspects of
the novel that reminded me of To Kill a
Mockingbird. The attitude of most of
the townspeople towards the blacks in Colored Town is an obvious
similarity. The trial also addresses
prejudice, though in this novel, it is more class rather than racial
prejudice. Kya is considered guilty by
many just because she is “swamp trash”; even Kya’s lawyer says that, “’Most [of
the jurors] have probably already decided – and not in Kya’s favor’” before
deliberation begins.
Many reviewers have
commented on the surprise ending, but I didn’t find it was a surprise in the
least. Kya lives where the crawdads
sing, “far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters”
and we are told at the very beginning that marsh dwellers have their own laws, “Ancient
and natural, like those hatched from hawks and doves. When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man
reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. . . . It is not a morality,
but simple math.”
I enjoyed this
book. It is not great literature but
there’s an interesting plot with considerable suspense and doubt surrounding
the murder investigation. It examines
social and racial divides and the effects of isolation on a person who yearns
to connect with others and to be loved.
I plan to watch the film version when it is released.
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