crawdads

Not sure what to make of this book, Where the Crawdads Sing.  It had been on the New York Times best seller list forever, so I requested it from the library consortium.  About a month later, it arrived.

It is engaging and well written enough to have me go through it in a couple of days during Memorial Day weekend.  I enjoyed it, but have this caveat.

If the book was intended to be taken literally, as in an event that actually could take place--then it does not cut it.  The book does not pass the ridickalus test for plausibility. Kya could not have survived as she did for as long as she did.  Even if she had been as resourceful, she would have been discovered and unable to continue as she did.  Maybe what happens to momma could have happened, poppa is a caricature but there are such poppas-but not the three other siblings.  Other stuff too. The trial was not real in any way. Even for 1970 which, just for you young-uns, was not a prehistoric peirod. I was not living in rural North Carolina then, but still.

So, if the book was intended to be taken as the telling of an event that could have occurred, then my comment is that it reads as a young adult novel.

But as a novel with meaning beyond the alleged events, it is a good one--fantastic in the literal sense of the word.  Very sweet. An adult fairy tale.

I already have recommended the book and will continue to do so. I think it will stick with me, but not because of the plot which, as I have written, could not have happened. 

A question: Are there times when a wrong can be a right? And if so, who has the right, to commit a wrong when that wrong is right?