“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”
In this period I’m an extremely slow reader. It took me about 3 months to finish this book, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. And not because I didn’t enjoy it, but simply because I’m not dedicating a lot of time to reading in my daily life.
I kind of felt like reading something easy and without too many claims, and, at the same time, I wanted something about nature that would project me somewhere far away, in space and time, like some sort of time travel.
The story is pretty simple and tastes like a fairy tale. North Carolina, ‘60s. There are many rumors in town about the Marsh Girl: can she speak? Is she even human? Who is she actually? Kya is a girl who, since her early childhood has been abandoned by her entire family, first her mother, then her siblings, and finally her violent father. They all left her alone in that wooden shack in the marsh. There, not to perish, she has to learn how to survive alone in nature, and with time she acquires all the necessary skills and knowledge to survive in the wild. The marsh becomes her home and its inhabitants become her family. There’s love and a little bit of mystery, Kya is not the only character in this book, two men will have an important impact on her life. There’s not much to say about the plot, many people might think it’s an obvious story with nothing new to tell. But, honestly, I really liked it and it resonates with several aspects of my life.
Since I was a little girl, in fact, I always had a very strong connection with nature, because, even if I grew up in the city, I spent all my summers at my grandpa’s house in the countryside. I still remember those long sunny afternoons alone in the garden, looking for fairies and magical creatures, sometimes I even went alone in the woods and one of my dreams was to live by myself in the forest with a lot of wild animals, eating wild plants and mushrooms. This book reported exactly that vibe, even if with a gloomy atmosphere.
This is, in fact, first and foremost, a book about deep loneliness. Kya has no family, no friends, simply no one, and has to find in herself the strength and the support she needs. The only people who care about her are the grocer Jumpin’ and his wife, and Tate, Kya’s first and only friend, whom she’ll fall in love with. I definitely didn’t experience all the violence she lived and, even if I don’t have the perfect family and we’re not super close, I still have a family and several important friends in my life. However, I also have a long experience of loneliness and feeling abandoned. I think I’ve only seen a few times such a precise description of that feeling as I did in this book. Kya is the perfect representation of what a person becomes after a life of rejection and abandonment, she finds an anchor only in herself and in the nature around her, the marsh isn’t simply a place anymore, but it becomes her mother, her father, her siblings. That’s why she never leaves it for her entire life.
“Finally the fear came. From a place deeper than the sea. Fera from knowing she would be alone again. Probably always. A life sentence.”
Often I’ve met people who take all the credit for being self-confident and for their successes, but I think that we never give enough importance to the people around us who love us and give us that security. Alone, completely alone, nobody can really bloom.
“Leaning on someone leaves you on the ground”
Only by having the chance to find people we can trust in our early years, we can develop that sense of internal stability that can lead to healthy relationships in the future, Kya doesn’t have this luck and is therefore forced to only rely on herself. A merit of this book, I think, is definitely describing her inner fracture between the longing for love and the fear of abandonment. This is probably one of the factors that made me appreciate this book so much because I identified with her feelings several times throughout the chapters.
As said, what I personally experienced wasn’t so extreme, but I grew up as an only child and my family has never been super close, so I know this feeling of growing up in an empty house. My mother never physically abandoned me, but at the same time, she never had the capacity to give me emotional support and accept my feelings for what they were, so since childhood, I saw many times my emotions being dismissed, diminished, or denied and this led me to experience this internal confusion of not trusting myself or the others every time I feel vulnerable. Growing up I experienced rejection in love many times and even if that’s something that sooner or later happens to almost everyone, in my case was something so internalized that I’m still struggling to break its chains.
Even if it made me look again at some of my ancient wounds, reading this book was a cathartic and hopeful experience and I would recommend it to all the people who suffered loneliness and are trying to build their integrity and stability.
We can all find our metaphorical marsh. That safe place where we feel grounded and protected. It doesn’t even have to be a physical place, it could be everything. It’s just there, waiting to be found.
My rating: 7.5/10
