With one short drag I inhaled this book and held my breath. In the course of a day’s reading I was moved to laughter and despair with such intensity as I cannot remember from any previous book.

Easily the book of 2021 so far for me.

Where the Crawdads Sing is the very best kind of triple threat. It has character, plot and plenty of style.

The development of our main character is heartwarming. Through difficult circumstances we are constantly struck by her courage and intellect. Her story rouses a pride and affection that few other literary characters could claim.

Nature is our setting, our lens and a core theme. It’s how Kya comes to understand the world, and how we are allowed to understand her as well. It’s the way she rationalises her mother’s departure and how she reasons about boys, men, mates.

The beauty and variety of her marsh existence, her habitat, is wonderfully depicted, but the natural surroundings provide more than scenery. It seeps with unassuming beauty into the language, which draws on natural themes to provide an unobtrusive but powerful guide through the waterways and the years of her life. It is pacy but reflective. Gradually we are shown her world, her memories, her fears. Never does it feel forced, yet we aren’t left lacking depth either. Elegant, transparent style.

“…and just like that spring elbowed her way in…”

We live the harsh prejudices of those who treat her like more of the disposable marsh life that they wish to destroy, symbolised literally by the attempt to develop over the marshland. But we learn that the marsh is an irreplaceable part of the ecosystem. Is Kya proven irreplaceable too? Essential in some way to its eventual growth? One significant character chooses to think of her as object, posses-able creature, for use and abuse. In fateful warning of the marshland’s importance, attempting to dominate the marsh girl proves consequential.

Kya is haunted by the acceptance she never received from the people of her town. This ignorance is highlighted when her publications, under a few names that aren’t “Marsh Girl”, are revered, her intellect accepted and respected. But, as we draw to our finale, many are incapable of seeing behind the monster their own myth had created.

Approached at two angles the finale is gripping and frightfully tense. Prepare to hold your breath and squint undaringly at concluding paragraphs, a phenomenal crescendo. Your fear deeply rooted, your hope hard and desperate.

( I read this in public, and my audible gasps of breath and other reactions were enough to attract local attention. )

Where the Crawdads Sing is a careful study of trust and abandonment, why we run for safety, and why others leave us. Most of all it is an examination of why we push others away, brittle from fear and pain. Just as Kya collects and labels her specimens, Owens lays out human connection and disconnection in all its forms, without convolution or contrivance, observed just like the turkeys and the herons, wild and natural.

Superb. Owens’ next will find me first in line.