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A review by lpm100
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
2.0
It's really not all that interesting of a book.
Don't know how it has nearly a quarter of a million reviews on amazon.
Short attention span summary:
1. A troubled marriage produces five kids.
2. One day, the mother gets up and walks away.
3. Over the space of a few months, four kids leave.
4. Then finally, after another year or so the father disappears and he leaves behind a 10-year-old. (Somehow, CPS is not able to find her she only goes to school for one single day.)
5. She makes money selling mussels and different knick knacks when she goes into the city.
6. She has not one, but two relationships. One of which, of course, is with The Most Handsome Guy in the City.
7. Handsome Guy dies under mysterious circumstances, for which she is tried and acquitted.
8. She marries her first love and they live together forever with no children until she dies--after which husband finds something that looks like evidence that she actually did kill Handsome Guy.
The end
*******
There's just too much that's implausible here to make this a useful story.
And it would have been useful if it gave us an idea of the lives of swamp people. Other movies/documentaries have dealt with people who live in atypical ways. Notably: "Leave No Trace."
It could have been a book about a girl who grew up illiterate until she was 14 years old or so learning to live around modern people.
Can we really be expected to believe that:
1. Social Services never managed to find this child?
2. A woman goes into town for weeks on end and the lure of indoor plumbing/electricity is not enough to induce her away from living in a shack?
3. Tail is tail is tail. Some guy is going to pass over many other available women to chase down a woman who is living in a shack and still using an outhouse? (I know that some people don't mind unpleasant smells during sex, but in this hypothetical scenario there would have to be some stopping point.)
4. Segregated seating all the way until the 1970s? (About 6 years out of date.)
5. Woman does not have enough sense to even open a bank account, but can m astermind a murder?
6. Protagonist woman is just so fragile you think that she might have a nervous breakdown / die of shock if somebody even sneezed in her direction. She just couldn't even say anything during the trial because it was all so much. Yes, somebody like this is the one that masterminds a murder.
Verdict: Not recommended. The author doesn't craft the verbal tapestries of an author like John green, and sometimes a book that has an implausible plot is worth reading just because of the author's prose.
But, not this author.
Save your money.
New Vocabulary:
Tump
Swamp trash
Crinoline
Swannee
Nubbin (of soap)
Croker sack
Switchback
Gunwale
Don't know how it has nearly a quarter of a million reviews on amazon.
Short attention span summary:
1. A troubled marriage produces five kids.
2. One day, the mother gets up and walks away.
3. Over the space of a few months, four kids leave.
4. Then finally, after another year or so the father disappears and he leaves behind a 10-year-old. (Somehow, CPS is not able to find her she only goes to school for one single day.)
5. She makes money selling mussels and different knick knacks when she goes into the city.
6. She has not one, but two relationships. One of which, of course, is with The Most Handsome Guy in the City.
7. Handsome Guy dies under mysterious circumstances, for which she is tried and acquitted.
8. She marries her first love and they live together forever with no children until she dies--after which husband finds something that looks like evidence that she actually did kill Handsome Guy.
The end
*******
There's just too much that's implausible here to make this a useful story.
And it would have been useful if it gave us an idea of the lives of swamp people. Other movies/documentaries have dealt with people who live in atypical ways. Notably: "Leave No Trace."
It could have been a book about a girl who grew up illiterate until she was 14 years old or so learning to live around modern people.
Can we really be expected to believe that:
1. Social Services never managed to find this child?
2. A woman goes into town for weeks on end and the lure of indoor plumbing/electricity is not enough to induce her away from living in a shack?
3. Tail is tail is tail. Some guy is going to pass over many other available women to chase down a woman who is living in a shack and still using an outhouse? (I know that some people don't mind unpleasant smells during sex, but in this hypothetical scenario there would have to be some stopping point.)
4. Segregated seating all the way until the 1970s? (About 6 years out of date.)
5. Woman does not have enough sense to even open a bank account, but can m astermind a murder?
6. Protagonist woman is just so fragile you think that she might have a nervous breakdown / die of shock if somebody even sneezed in her direction. She just couldn't even say anything during the trial because it was all so much. Yes, somebody like this is the one that masterminds a murder.
Verdict: Not recommended. The author doesn't craft the verbal tapestries of an author like John green, and sometimes a book that has an implausible plot is worth reading just because of the author's prose.
But, not this author.
Save your money.
New Vocabulary:
Tump
Swamp trash
Crinoline
Swannee
Nubbin (of soap)
Croker sack
Switchback
Gunwale