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Tag Archives: 1952

The Marsh Girl: Where the Crawdads Sing

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1952, 1960s, 1969, biology, book review, class prejudice, coming-of-age narrative, Delia Owens, evolution, historical fiction, inconsistent voice, injustice, Jim Crow, marshes, murder investigation, narrative tropes, South Carolina, wildlife

Review: Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
Putnam, 2018. 368 pp. $28

Six-year-old Kya doesn’t know her real name is Catherine, nor has she ever been to school. All she knows is the South Carolina marsh where she lives with several siblings, a drunken, violent father, and a much put-upon mother. But in summer 1952, Ma walks out, after which Kya’s brothers and sisters follow. Little Kya has to raise herself, essentially, because her father’s often absent on a bender, which can be a blessing. Her only friends are wild creatures, whose habits she comes to know intimately; her greatest, sole pleasure.

You see the wild creatures she loves, rendered with insight and deep feeling:

A great blue heron is the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water. And like the mist, she can fade into the backdrop, all of her disappearing except the concentric circles of her lock-and-load eyes. She is a patient, solitary hunter, standing alone as long as it takes her to snatch her prey. Or, eyeing her catch, she will stride forward one slow step at a time, like a predacious bridesmaid. And yet, on rare occasions she hunts on the wing, darting and diving sharply, swordlike beak in the lead.

Kya herself might answer to this description, especially that of the “patient, solitary hunter.” The vivid portrait of nature in a place nobody else wants, whose human inhabitants the inlanders consider trash, provides a superb background. And the tale of how this girl grows up by her own wits (and kindness of strangers), terrified of just about everybody and everything except the marsh, makes remarkable reading.

However, Where the Crawdads Sing doesn’t settle for the unusual coming-of-age story, and therein rests its greatest shortcoming. Jumping ahead to 1969, as many of these short chapters do, there’s a mystery as well. A former high school quarterback, the town Lothario, is found dead in the marsh. You guess right away that the police, utterly incompetent and desperate to find a murderer (they refuse to accept that such a demigod could have died accidentally), will home in on the Marsh Girl, what the locals call her. She’s reputed savage, lustful, and depraved, the townsfolk’s way saying that she’s different from them, therefore expendable.

The All-Star Bowling Alley, Orangeburg, South Carolina, pictured in 2015. In February 1968, police opened fire on Black students protesting the alley’s segregation policy at the time. Three students were killed and dozens injured. (Courtesy Ammodramus, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Granted, the southern-justice narrative provides an instantly recognizable means to raise the stakes. But Owens introduces the death in a prologue and keeps the police procedure front and center, as if the mind-boggling story of a little girl in a marsh weren’t enough. As years pass, there’s also a tender romance with a young man who accepts Kya as she is. I’d have thought all that sufficient and quite lovely, so I ask why we need the mystery. I will say that the murder investigation allows Owens to expound, sometimes cogently, on mating habits and the genetics of survival, linking her protagonist’s story to evolution, a clever conceit.

But much of the novel feels contrived. I never sense that Kya, who undergoes great hardship and takes brutal, yet often predictable, knocks, is ever really in danger. Terrible things happen, but just as the marsh protects her from outsiders who don’t know its waterways or approaches, the narrative cocoons her, in a way.

Start with how a child grows to her twenties in perfect health, without ever having seen a doctor or dentist. But if that sounds like nitpicking, consider the split time frame, which puts you in 1969 right away, undermining the tensions of 1952 and the immediate years afterward. Also, the kind strangers often appear at just the right moment, sometimes bearing a bounty too good to be true. After a while, I get the idea that whatever trouble comes her way, luck will favor her.

Further, Kya’s voice goes all over the map, which jars me and pulls me out of the story. Owens seems eager to get to the age where Kya speaks and thinks like an autodidact biologist offering thoughtful commentary about evolution (itself a stretch), rather than stay with the bewildered, frightened child who doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from, or how to prepare it. Since I want to hear the child and don’t always believe the self-trained scientist, the struggle between the voices is very distracting, especially when one intrudes on the other. The paragraph quoted above, about the heron, supplies an example; Kya wouldn’t know what “concentric circles” means, let alone “bridesmaid” or “lock-and-load.” So who’s watching the heron?

Finally, the year 1969 witnessed turmoil and great events, but I don’t recognize them here, or little about the Sixties, for that matter. The Vietnam War barely makes an appearance, and though Jim Crow seeps around the edges, it’s as if Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement had gone unheard of in South Carolina. Moon landing? Nary a mention, even among the inlanders.

Despite a terrific premise and beautiful prose, Where the Crawdads Sing is one of those novels that would have appealed to me more had the author crammed less in it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Feeling Good: Lies in White Dresses

23 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1952, book review, character conflict, divorce, fantasy vs real life, far-fetched story, happily ever after, historical fiction, predictable plot, protecting characters, Reno, Sofia Grant, unearned ending, unreal psychology

Review: Lies in White Dresses, by Sofia Grant
Morrow, 2019. 359 pp. $17

In 1952, two lifelong friends, Francie and Vi, take a train from San Francisco to Reno, where they plan to take advantage of Nevada’s six-week residency law to obtain divorces. They’ve each got grown children, and neither has a frivolous bone in her body, so you sense a story lurking there, especially since both believe that divorce is a shame and a scandal. But there’s more. Their trip has hardly begun when they adopt June, a younger woman with a four-year-old daughter in tow. Turns out June has a vengeful, abusive husband she’s running from, and she’s practically penniless. So Vi and Francie bring her to the hotel where they’re staying.

Reno, Nevada, in 2007 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

It’s a wonderful premise, and it might have propelled an equally satisfying narrative. However, that doesn’t happen. Since I’ve beaten up this kind of book often enough, I’d like to use this example to talk about happy endings and how they get that way. There’s a difference between a happy ending for a character who’s struggled to get there and a happy ending that feels like an arranged marriage. Guess which kind we’re discussing here.

As usual, it doesn’t have to be that way. Lies in White Dresses builds on the wreckage of three marriages, laden with conflict, past and potential, fuel for explosive confrontation. To her credit, Grant doesn’t shy away from ugly scenes. She also gives Vi and Francie a few unpleasant character traits, not least of which are social prejudices they refuse to surrender. So far, so good.

Even better, Vi’s soon-to-be ex-husband is a real doozy, a philandering, controlling egotist who believes money means (and moves) everything. Throw in Francie’s daughter, Alice, born with one leg shorter than the other, which fills Mama with shame, despite herself. I like that complex reaction, which, again, has potential for depth; what’s more, Alice, no fool, resents her mother’s unspoken attitude. But the saddest person is June, who’d apologize to the air for breathing it, if she could. She says she wants to escape her violent husband, but she doesn’t really believe she can. I agree.

The way I’ve described Lies in White Dresses, you might expect real, agonizing conflicts that have exacted a terrible cost. Instead, you get fantasy. Not legitimate fantasy, mind you, in which the protagonist has gone on a quest that tests her, body and soul, or a farce or satire or frothy entertainment in which you know nothing’s real from the start. No; here, you’re shown how people have deeply hurt each other, just as in real life. But there’s no resolution or much attempt at one, only quick-and-easy apologies to calm the roiled waters, which no one dares disturb afterward.

However, something has to take the place of the unsaid and unfelt, in this case two expendable secondary characters, inserted to set up an ending that’s completely far-fetched, yet utterly predictable. One of these secondary characters is the twelve-year-old daughter of the hotel keeper, cute at first but an obnoxious busybody at heart, until she redeems herself by playing the heroine. Even less likely, Grant has the girl absorb wisdom from a whore with a heart of gold. Ironically, this mentor is actually the only honest, appealing character in the novel, having escaped the Lysol bath that’s cleansed everyone else; she freely avows her appetites, whether sexual, monetary, or alimentary.

By now, the narrative has required a tower of scaffolding and construction of faux walls to keep out fickle life. That’s how June can absorb a few months of kindness and develop the self-esteem that’s been beaten out of her for more than twenty years. Or how Alice, the half-loved child, turns out more mature and psychologically whole than her mother. Happens all the time, right?

As a novelist, I understand the urge to protect my characters. We’re all guilty of doing so, and I’m sure that’s hampered me. We love our characters and don’t want to hurt them too badly or have the reader dislike them, because that feels personal, like a slap. You’ve insulted my baby! But overprotective authors hurt their fiction, just as overprotective parents hurt their kids. And if I see antagonists trip over their shoelaces or the good guys cruise into happily-ever-after as though it’s a fast-food joint open 24/7, I get cranky. (In case you didn’t notice.) I’ll accept a happy ending, sure, if it’s earned. But people have to sweat, fight themselves and their conflicts, and if they come out wiser, well, hand them the bunch of roses. Lies in White Dresses doesn’t earn that right, though. Consequently, I wonder how anyone can actually feel good after the feel-good ending. It’s too much like real life, yet also not enough.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this from the public library.

East African Gothic: Leopard at the Door

06 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1952, book review, colonialism, East Africa, Gothic, historical fiction, Jennifer McVeigh, Kenya, literary fiction, Mau Mau, melodrama, racism, twentieth century, violence

Review: Leopard at the Door, by Jennifer McVeigh
Putnam, 2016. 385 pp. $26

Ever since her mother died, and her father sent her to live with her grandparents in England, Rachel Fullsmith has dreamed of returning to Kenya, where she was born. Now, at age eighteen, against her father’s advice, she has spent her meager savings for her passage to Mombasa. As Rachel quickly learns, she finds hostility rather than fond memories of what she loved as a child.

That hostility comes in two forms, personal and political. The year is 1952, and the independence movement known as Mau Mau has been gathering force. Thus far, the Mau Mau have refrained from attacking white residents, though they have murdered and mutilated Africans who refuse to swear their loyalty oath. But as the violence and British countermeasures ratchet up, Rachel will have excruciating choices to make.

A detachment of the King's African Rifles, on patrol against Mau Mau forces, ca. 1952-56 (courtesy Imperial War Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

A detachment of the King’s African Rifles, on patrol against Mau Mau forces, ca. 1952-56 (courtesy Imperial War Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

As the opening scenes make clear, the instincts her mother taught her stress compassion toward fellow humans over race loyalty and its inherent prejudice. Right off the boat, she’s delighted to realize that she still speaks good Swahili, and that the port of Mombasa looks and feels like heaven, despite the filth and bad smells. Her father’s Kikuyu foreman, who meets her and drives her upcountry, calls her Aleela (“she cries”), a pet name she had as a child, which touches her. But her father hasn’t come to greet her, and when Rachel reaches the farm, she sees another woman there, Sara, whom he never mentioned in his letters. It takes no time for Sara to let Rachel know that she shares her father’s bed, runs everything (including him), and plans to marry him. And rather than ease the shock, Sara takes the first chance to ask Rachel privately, “Why did you come?” Aleela will be doing a lot of crying, it seems.

I love McVeigh’s premise and the way she sets it up, with potent economy and subtlety. She knows how to spin a riveting narrative so that the tension never flags, and she devotes this skill to advance her political themes, embodied in Sara, who grew up in Nairobi, hates rural Kenya, which she calls “barren,” and holds herself distant from and superior to anything African. That makes her as different as she could be from Rachel’s mother, and the young woman pays the price, both in what she’s lost and her putative stepmother’s authoritarian regime. Sara forbids her to spend so much time outdoors on the land, urges her to dress in a more “feminine” way, and openly questions whether Rachel’s absence of fear or hatred for Africans means she’s been spoiled or tainted. McVeigh wants you to see that colonialism exists because of people like Sara.

Since I’ve spent time in Africa myself, though never had the good fortune to visit Kenya, I was delighted to read descriptions like this, of Rachel’s impressions of Mombasa:

Bougainvillea tumble over white walls, purple, orange, crimson red, amidst the trumpets of white datura flowers and clusters of pink hibiscus. Dhow captains spread their intricately woven carpets on the street for sale, beating out the dust in thick clouds. Porters in bare feet and white lunghis pad across the hot cobbles between piles of old newspaper and fish bones, past the Arab men dressed in white robes, who sit on low wooden stools drinking tea.

Despite all this brilliance, however, the characters ring false. Sara has no redeeming qualities whatsoever; at one point, Rachel even wonders why her father would have her around and ascribes it to sexual power. But that’s never developed enough to seem real. Moreover, making such a hateful, disagreeable person the mouthpiece for colonialism undermines takes the low road to simplicity and undermines what the author’s trying to say.

Ditto Steven Lockhart, the corrupt, abusive district officer who likes torturing Africans and warns Rachel that he’ll rape her one day. Of both Sara and Steven, I kept thinking, “They’re not really going to say or do that, will they?” only to slap my head when they really do. What’s more, for these characters to be as vicious as they are and get away with it requires Rachel and her father to be as passive as bricks. Not only don’t I believe that–each has taken bold steps in life–I find passivity uninteresting as a literary device.

What that means is that Leopard at the Door must sustain the tension via melodrama. I won’t go into the perils that McVeigh unleashes, which are truly terrifying. Even so, the novel’s Gothic aspects make it less powerful than it should be. That’s a terrible shame. As McVeigh notes in a postscript (and contrary to widely held belief), the facts suggest that the colonial administration wielded far more terror than the Mau Mau did, and in a manner flagrantly belying the rule of law the British pretended to uphold as a “civilizing” mission. I only wish this book had set the record straight in a more nuanced, three-dimensional manner.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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Recent Posts

  • The Marsh Girl: Where the Crawdads Sing
  • No Quarter: Wolves of Eden
  • Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World
  • Orwell’s Vision: The Last Man in Europe
  • What Will It Take?: The Last Thing You Surrender

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2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
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