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

This April the Club 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.

The 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...’

As well as hearing from Emma about her thoughts and observations on Where the Crawdads Sing, the floor will once again be opening the floor up to you, the club members, to share your own observations and remarks. To get you thinking and to help prepare any comments or questions you might want to share, we have prepared three starter questions: 

1. The marsh provides the backdrop to this novel, and is also one of its main characters. How does the portrayal of the marsh, and all the life it teems with, affect Kya and the way she sees and interacts with the world around her?
2. Poetry helps Tate and Kya make sense of their feelings and surroundings. What role did Amanda Hamilton’s poems play in the novel? Were they an effective narrative tool?
3. Over the course of her life, Kya is left by all those she loves, and othered by the members of her community, who refer to her as the Marsh Girl. Did the theme of loneliness resonate differently after the collective social isolation we’ve experienced over the last two years?

Further information about The Really Popular Book Club, including our FAQs, can be found here.