Book Hangover: Where The Crawdad’s Sing

I loved Where The Crawdad’s Sing so much, that I read it all in one day and then was promptly bombarded with book hangover symptoms.

According to Epic Reads, a book hangover is defined as a “condition in which attachment to a book or series that has ended causes the reader traumatic emotional distress. It usually lasts for one to two weeks, or until a new book of higher-than-average quality enters the reader's life.”

Anyone else relate? I get completely immersed in the book, that I almost become the character. And once the book is finished, I have to fight so hard to return to my old self. Their pain and past becomes mine. The worst thing is that I feel like a stranger to the people around me, completely immersed in a fictional world.

I did find a quick trick that helps me break out of the spell and return to reality: Diving deep into the story of how the book was made.

The beauty and allure of the fictional world pales in comparison to the talent and creativity of the mind that created this world.

So that’s precisely what I did. I listened to Delia Owens speak about her life, her inspirations and her words slowly untangled and separated Kya’s story from my own.

In this interview, she explicitly talks about her theory of animal behavior that she implicitly taught in her novel.

Surprising to me, Delia Owens is actually a wildlife scientist with a PhD in Animal Behavior. After reading, The Signature of All Things by Elisabeth Gilbert, I assumed her to be the same kind of author; not a scientist, just a damn good writer and researcher.

Instead, Delia Owens is a scientist who wanted to use fiction to explore principles she witnessed in the wild.

"But the longer I studied animal behavior the more I became determined to write a novel that would explore how some of these ancient genes that we have are similar to animal behavior would effect us today." - Delia Owens 

She also wanted to explore how the absence of female friendships can effect a young woman. She spoke about her observations of female lions, and how their “society” is based on a pack of females. When the male cubs reach adolescence, they leave the pack and begin hunting for mates in different female groups. This similarity of animal and human behavior of female friendships and mating was interesting reflect back on.

She also wanted to “explore how much isolation would change a young girl forced to grow up on her own."

 I loved this part, especially when it came to her education. This passage in particular was beautiful;

His soft words, sounding almost like poetry, taught her that soil is packed with life and one of the most precious riches on earth; that draining wetlands dries the land for miles beyond, killing plants and animals along with the water. Some of the seeds lie dormant in the desiccated earth for decades, waiting, and when the water finally comes home again, they burst through the soil, unfolding their faces. Wonders and real-life knowledge she would've never learned in school. Truths everyone should know, yet somehow, even though they lay exposed all around, seemed to lie in secret like the seeds.

That last sentence articulated my feelings about the holes in traditional education beautifully.

The main heroine, Kya learns many lessons not from people - but from Nature.

She learns how to hunt for mussels from Ravens

She learns about comradery from the Grey Herons

She learns about deceptions from the Fireflies

What a gorgeous, enchanting book, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

P.S. She titled the book Where The Crawdads Sing as tribute to her mother, who always encouraged her to venture so deep into the forests of Georgia that she would enter the ethereal place ‘where the crawdads sing.’ And if you’re also curious wtf a crawdad is - check it out here.

Hope you find some of that adventure, any way you can.

Be well,