The best character of Crawdads was the Carolinian swamp. It almost manages to evoke the Garden of Eden, a biodiverse paradise of sea and land life intruded on by humans. It’s a truly gorgeous rendition of a place and time on Earth just before the last pockets of extraordinarily uninterrupted natural life was snuffed out in the United States and just before a broad sterilisation and industrialisation of many of these areas.
When early European colonisers first came to the Americas, they spoke of such a bountiful paradise, one where the Chesapeake Bay had waters “as blue and clear as the Caribbean” with “oysters […] the size of dinner plates”. Crawdads evokes this last Edenic pocket of America, and is by far the strongest part of the novel. Coastal North Carolina is lush, and set expectations high in its opening act. Its opening act (before many major characters were introduced) is evocative of a different American novel, removed from urban environments. In fact it’s damn near screaming to pay attention to it, that it’s the next “Great American Novel”.
But it’s not the next Great American Novel. It desperately tries to in its opening scenes but falls short throughout the book. Crawdads is dependent on its environment to differentiate itself. Try removing the swamp in your mind, and you’ll observe that the book really is little different from a terrible Wattpad romance fan-fiction (not that I know what they look like, what I envision them to be).
I care very little for the writing and dialogue. They both are just super clunky at times — devoid of the same thought and care put into the setting. It swoops down to the Wattpad fan-fiction level for an uncomfortable amount of the book. Just absolutely terrible. There are arguments to be made (in the other critical reviews) about poorly considered character development. I think this is exceedingly true (the “manic pixie girl” allegations are quite accurate) but on another level I think it’s fit to give the author some leeway for intending some of this behaviour as an exploration of the effects of isolation. Certainly there’s a gender-based POV that the author alluded to in the post-writing interview that I’m not able to explore. The discussion in reviews of locations outside the coast also confuse me — and I’m not quite sure why North Carolina is viewed as a state with a coast and one city until the very end of the book, and this aspect only serves to take away the author’s credibility.
Much of the rating is given for its descriptions of the swamp and nature. It loses points for being generally average. Book generously gifted by my girlfriend, Jolene.
2/5
Written 2 January 2024
Adapted from my review on Goodreads.