The Really Popular Book Club: Where the Crawdads Sing

Tue 19 April 2022

The Really Popular Book Club is the reading group hosted by Cambridge University Libraries. Everyone is invited to join us and our special guests to discuss a really popular book, one that we all know and perhaps or perhaps not love.

This April we will be discussing Delia Owen’s debut novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, which topped the New York Times Best Fiction Best Sellers of both 2019 and 2020 and was the Winner of the British Book Awards Pageturner Book of the Year 2021.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a captivating tale of a young girl and her inextricable bond with the marshes she inhabits. This book has it all: a turbulent coming of age story, youthful romance, ruthlessly beautiful nature, and a thrilling crime that will keep you turning the pages until the very end. Delia Owen’s skilful craftsmanship of this interweaving narrative creates a deeply moving and evocative story, poignantly reflective and steeped in a profound love for and understanding of nature in all its forms.

Our special guest for the evening will be Emma Muench, Editorial Officer at Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation, a peer-reviewed journal published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International. Emma has a BSc in Geography from the University of Sussex and an MSc in Conservation Science from Imperial College London. She has a keen interest in wildlife conservation and has experience working on primate, sea turtle, and tropical fish monitoring projects. Emma also chairs the Cambridge Conservation Initiative’s Book Club, which discusses a wide variety of nature-themed books.

About Where the Crawdads Sing, Emma says: ‘Brilliantly paced and lyrically written, Where the Crawdads Sing is a novel that drew me in from the very first page. Full of beautiful descriptions of the marsh and the species that inhabit it, Delia Owen’s creates a truly immersive narrative experience, laced with the thrill of a murder-mystery. As a conservationist and nature-lover, I was captured by the representation of ecological study and research, particularly when it came to Tate and Kya’s way of gathering knowledge from and interacting with their surroundings. Nature is one of the main themes and characters in this book, with the marsh assuming a strong motherly role in Kya’s life, and the lessons she learns as she grows up may lead her to act in ways you might not expect...’.

Cost: Free