Let’s go Where the crawdads sing with Delia Owens, which is then the original title of the book released in Italy as La ragazza della palude published by Solferino. A novel so beautiful to involve you, push you to close your eyes, feel the breath of the animals of the quagmire? The screams of seagulls? Certainly we fail to warn Kya, as fast as the same stream of water, camouflaged in that nature that welcomed her, loved while the others were not there. We begin by clarifying that Delia Owens is a naturalist. Writer of essays, is her first novel. The skill of such accurate descriptions of North Carolina’s coastal lagoons is incredible.
Where the crawdads sing is the story of Kya, a girl we know at the age of six, in 1952. She lives in a shack with her family in the middle of the swamp. A violent father, a mother who abandons her overnight, the brothers who go away one by one. Kya remains alone. With that scary and heartbreaking but also surprising solitude, the little girl learns to grow by relying on the nature around her. The catalog, knows it, becomes part of it.
The moving and emotional story of Kya’s growth, amid friendships, betrayals, marginalization goes hand in hand with the events of the late 1960s. When Chase, son of the richest family in the country, is found dead. The first suspect of murder becomes Kya: for the story they had (hidden) and for the prejudices of the entire community. A book with twists and feelings, a thriller not thriller, a novel that you can’t leave until the last page. And I also mean the style of Delia Owens, capable of touching us deeply without ever falling into the rhetoric of feelings. Where crayfish sing is a way of saying, to indicate a very distant place. But you want to go there.
