Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens #USfiction

When one sets out to read a book, you enter into a contract of sorts with the author. You agree to be apart of their world and to go along for the ride. As I've discussed before, we all have our own criteria by which we judge a book and whether we will pick it up off the shelf, or not. Or whether we will look inside it, or not. Or whether we will read beyond the first page, or not.

We all have expectations that we want a new book to meet. We all have moods and daily lives that dictate what might appeal at any certain time in our life, or not. When you find a book that grabs you from page one and you agree to go with the author all the way to the end, it's a truly magical moment. I usually know from page one, if this will happen or not.

Not all the books I read are Literature with a capital L.
I enjoy lighter reads, comfort reads and pot-boilers at times. The Jonathan Coe trilogy I've been reading recently are lightly, humorously written. They are flawed, but utterly, utterly engaging. I have agreed to go along with Coe's premise and we have a lot of fun together. I love the early Liane Moriarty books for the same reason. I am prepared to be entertained by her, and entertain she does.

Both these authors write with a warmth and affection that sucks me in from the start.
But I will not suspend believability for anyone. I can live with obvious. I can live with tropes and stereotypes. And I can live with working out what will happen early on, simply to enjoy the 'I knew it! I told you so' at the end. But I have to believe. It has to be plausible.

For such a major, best selling book, I managed to hear very little about Where The Crawdads Sing. Readers have merely gushed about their feelings about the book - all glowing - without revealing any spoilers. They all insist I should read this book, that I will love it, it's the best story they've read in a long, long time and they can't wait to see the movie version of it.

So when my book club nominated Where The Crawdads Sings as our March book, I was happy enough to go along with the hype. I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

I knew I was in trouble from the first page though.

I wasn't seduced by the writing or the story. Well-worn tropes and stereotypes abounded and by the 30% mark I was getting angry at the lack of believability. I seriously thought about stopping, but I didn't finish my last book club book either. Guilt set in and I started skim reading.

For my own amusement, I decided to make predictions (**below**) about what I think will happen.

**My guess is that Kya will be hassled by Chase as they become young adults, she will fall in love with Tate, but there will be issues about whether she deserves to be loved or not. Chase will take advantage of her somehow, until she snaps and kills him. She has obviously done a good job of covering it up, so I am curious to find out how the bumbling police officers work it out.**

So why does Where the Crawdads Sing resonate with so many readers?

I can see that the nature writing might be lovely in places. I googled the Great Dismal Swamp, and I can see that it is (now) quite beautiful. It's history as a hideout for runaway slaves, outcasts and hermits is fascinating stuff. I'd love to watch a wildlife/social history documentary about the area.

Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina

Murder mystery is a genre that has wide appeal, as is the overcoming poverty, hardship and ghastly childhood trope. Books about prejudice, social injustice, domestic violence and war veteran PTSD can enrage, upset and move us. They can open our eyes and hearts to those living a life different to our own. However, romanticised versions of 'white trash done good', like this one, do little to advance that cause. The nature/nurture debate is also one that can attract a lot of interest, but I still insist on believability for this to be effective as a trope. The Reese Witherspoon book club nod obviously boosted book sales too.

**At the 60% mark. If Kya keeps quoting Amanda Hamilton poems, I may have to fling my book across the room! And enough with all the nature similes about animals killing their mate after sex - we get it. We get it!**

**90% mark. Really! She wrote a book!! Three books!! I flung MY book across the room!
Kya's chat with Jodie about isolation, and the consolations of nature, might have been moving, but the Jodie scar memory, just before he turned up out of the blue, was so clunky and so convenient, I flung my book again! And don't get me started on the totally unbelievable provincial court room drama!**

**100% At least Tate agreed with me about how awful the Amanda Hamilton poems were! I had my satisfying 'I knew it' moment. I'm just surprised it took everyone else so long to work it out. And why isn't there an online outrage about the protagonist getting away with pre-meditated murder?**

I have now found another reviewer (Lit & Leisure) who failed to be captured by this book so now I don't feel so alone in my stand.

I usually shy away from negative reviews, because I rarely read a book these days that I don't want to read. Thanks to my day job, I have a wide array of book choices that can be picked up and put down without any financial sacrifice. If I don't like a book, I simply stop reading and find a book I do like. Where the Crawdads Sing is a book that wouldn't have passed my usual 'first page' test. But since I felt compelled to read this for book club, I persisted.

Not every book can suit every reader.

I certainly don't want to trash someone else's favourite book of all time, but I do feel a little disheartened that such an ordinary book can gain so much attention. Maybe in these difficult times, though, an easy to read, romantic murder mystery is the escapism ticket that many readers need.

I'm curious to hear why some of my book club members loved this book so much, and why some are saying it's the best book they've read in a long time. I remember being just as confused and bemused by the success of Fifty Shades of Grey years ago. It's great that these books can get so many people reading again, I just wish they could be ones that were better written!

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

Patrick DeWitt is a Canadian author who now lives in Oregon, USA. The Sisters Brothers won the 75th Canadian Governor General's Literary Awards and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.

The Man Booker shortlist synopsis states that,

this dazzlingly original novel is a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. 

What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. 

Told in deWitt’s darkly comic and arresting style, The Sisters Brothers is the kind of western the Coen Brothers might write – stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel Ablutions, it is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work 

It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction and displays an exciting expansion of Dewitt’s range.

I confess this type of story is not my usual fare, but sometimes a book benefits from a little detective work before reading. 

I had tried to read UnderMajorDomo Minor a couple of years ago after Mr Books raved about how much he enjoyed it. But I couldn't get into it at all. When my bookclub assigned The Sisters Brothers as our February read, I knew I would have to work at finding a way in. I kept putting off reading it and when I bumped into a couple of bookclub members in a local cafe who were both struggling along at the halfway mark, I knew this book was going to become my very own personal challenge.

So, I fell back onto good old-fashioned research.

I discovered via Wikipedia that The Sisters Brothers was inspired by a Time–Life book on the California Gold Rush, which deWitt found at a garage sale.

My back cover quote from the Financial Times informed me that it was,

a witty noir Don Quixote...a blackly comic fable about emptiness, loneliness and the hollow lure of gold.

I have never read Don Quixote, so I read it's wikipedia summary and learnt that,

1. Don Quixote doesn't see the world for what it really is
2. it's a parody of the romantic/chivalry style that was popular at the time
3. it features quests, adventures and episodes
4. fantasy versus the real world
5. famous quote 'tilting at windmills'
6. spawned it's own adjective 'quixotic'
7. was an example of a picaresque novel

What on earth is a picaresque novel?

I'm glad you asked!

The Brittanica website says, 

The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresca, from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by their wits in a corrupt society.

Image source

I now felt ready to begin my journey with Eli and Charlie Sisters.

Eli is our faithful but disaffected narrator. We quickly learn that he is kind-hearted, sensitive and not at all keen to continue life as a hit-man. He is burnt-out and reminded me somewhat of Jules in the movie Pulp Fiction who also wants to retire from his life of crime.

Eli's voice is rather dry and wry, deadpan yet melancholic. The fraternal relationship is the heart and soul of this wild west picaresque (yes! she used it in a sentence! new word bonus!) as the title suggests.

Charlie is a harder case to crack. He's the older brother who watches over (bosses around) his adoring younger brother. As their journey proceeds, Eli is forced to see Charlie more realistically and less idealistically even as Charlie undergoes his own life-altering event.

Their bizarre adventures, weird coincidences and chance meetings move us from Oregon to California via saloons, shoot-outs and drunken binges. A crying horseman, a cursed hut and a one-eyed horse cross our paths. A couple of unexpected intermissions are thrown in as well.

DeWitt was asked about these during an interview with Mumsnet,

I tend to work from a place of instinct rather than intellect. I like mysteries, in the work of others and in my own work as well. It's common for me to write sections that don't serve a specific purpose but feel necessary to me, and the intermission sections are good examples of this. I can't say that they propel a narrative or 'do'anything, but I find them crucial in fleshing out the landscape, illustrating its strangeness and "dangerousness".

The Western style that dominates the first two-thirds, suddenly changes to a sci-fi thriller when the brothers finally meet up with their latest target - a mad scientist type who has created a crazy toxic potion that finds gold.

A Telegraph review at the time described the book as Laurel & Hardy meets Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with a Little House on the Prairie ending. It's all of that and more.

I found myself thoroughly enjoying the ride that DeWitt took me on. Eli's narration is funny, poignant and insightful. The research helped me to get passed the hurdles that affected some of my fellow book-clubbers. It was a case of a little bit of knowledge going a long way.

A movie starring John C Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal and Joaquin Phoenix is due later this year. I may even be tempted to go and see it.

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

Lizzie Borden is a fascinating character.

Did she or did she not kill her father and stepmother with a hatchet one summer's day in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892?

So much has been written and said about these rather gruesome murders over the years. So much speculation and innuendo. What more is there possibly to say?

Firstly, in 2012, the journals of Lizzie's attorney, Andrew Jackson Jennings were bequeathed to the Fall River Historical Society.

Since then, the Society have had the journals transcribed by curators Michael Martins and Dennis Binette.
Snippets of information have been leaked out during this time, but apparently we are awaiting the publication of a book from the Society for the full reveal!

In the meantime, we have another book fictionalising Lizzie's story, Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done.

It's hard not to believe that Lizzie committed the murders. She was in the house at the time. She had the opportunity and the motive. And well, let's face it, from everything we've read ever since, she was rather unstable and most likely had a narcissistic and/or borderline personality disorder going on (not that everyone with NBPD is capable of murder, but it's just another one of the factors stacked against Lizzie in this case).

Schmidt tells her story from multiple perspective - Lizzie, Emma (the sister), Bridget (the maid) and Benjamin (a 'friend' of Uncle John's). This is where her tale diverges from some of the others.

Benjamin is a very dubious low-life thug that Uncle John meets en route to Fall River. He engages Benjamin to rough up/talk to Andrew in an attempt to dissuade Andrew from certain financial actions that John wasn't happy about.

Schmidt then uses Benjamin to 'see' things that others in the house at the time couldn't as well as using his presence to explain why the police couldn't find a murder weapon. Later on, he acts as the catalyst for the life-long estrangement of the two sisters in 1905.

This was a satisfying explanation, although somewhat frustrating at the same time. Benjamin is a fictional character in a story with real life well-known people. He provided us with some plausible possibilities, but ultimately, he's not real, so therefore his solutions are not the ones we need to solve this case once and for all.

I guess we will never know for sure, unless Jennings' journals prove to be as earth-shattering as the curators have promised.

If you'd like to read more versions of Lizzie's story you could try Angela Carter's The Fall River Axe Murders and Lizzie's Tiger, Elizabeth Engstrom's Lizzie Borden and Brandy Purdy's The Secrets of Lizzie Borden.

The murders and trial of Lizzie have also attracted a number of movie adaptations over the years. Actresses who have portrayed Lizzie include Elizabeth Montgomery, Christina Ricci, Alison Fraser and Chloe Sevigny.

See What I Have Done is a debut novel by Australian writer, Sarah Schmidt. She has a blog that details her writing journey.

Hachette Australia will publish See What I Have Done in April 2017.