RECENT READING
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
From the online comments I’ve read over the past six months, people either loved or hated this novel. I put off reading it until now, mostly because my local book group was going to discuss it and I wanted it to be fresh in my mind. I’m in the positive camp. I loved this novel! That is not to say that I found it completely convincing, but I did find it compelling.
Kya is just seven when her older siblings leave home and then her father does not return after being gone for several weeks. Her mother left them some time before so Kya goes to live in a shack in the nearby marsh. Hiding out from the school authorities, she survives isolated and alone until she reaches adolescence. In Tate, a teenager a few years older than she, she has her first friend and advocate who even teaches her to read. Tate goes off to college, abandons her for awhile, and another local young man, Chase Andrews, is attracted to her beauty and her strange wildness. When Andrews is found dead and foul play is suspected, the police’s first thought is of Kya, referred to by the townspeople as Marsh Girl. The intertwined strands of Kya’s childhood and coming-of-age and the murder investigation play out against each other, in chapters shifting back and forth in time.
A zoologist who spent many years studying wildlife in Africa, Owens would seem to be an unlikely novelist. Yet, she writes in a lyrical manner and her descriptions of the marsh and the nature around it are almost poetic. Despite the dire events, there is much joy in this novel, and even an ending that seems, if not contrived, perhaps too neat. What might almost term this story a fairy tale. But a very absorbing and captivating one!
Our book group had a very lively discussion with almost everyone having enjoyed the book. There were doubters as to whether Kya could really have survived alone and also if it was credible that she became such a successful author of nature guides. And several found the courtroom scenes hurried and almost as if one were reading a different novel entirely. For many of us, the twist at the end was a big surprise, but I think it’s fair to say that folks would recommend this novel to others. (~JWFarrington)
BIG SCREEN
Harriet
Harriet Tubman was one extraordinary woman. A slave who walked a hundred miles from Maryland to Pennsylvania to gain her freedom, leaving her husband, siblings and parents behind, she became one of the greatest conductors on the Underground Railroad. This film recounts her journey to freedom, her trip home to bring her husband north, and the countless trips she made to lead slaves from Maryland eventually to the Canadian border. It is a story of grit, determination, leadership, and the willingness to bear undue hardship.
The Chief Penguin and I visited her home in Auburn, N. Y. and its associated museum several years ago. Auburn is the town I grew up in and you didn’t live here without knowing about Tubman or about William Henry Seward, secretary of state and another Auburn resident, who sold her the land for her house. If you should get to the Finger Lakes region, in what is really upstate N.Y., the house and museum are worth a visit. In the meantime, see the film and learn more about this remarkable woman. She deserves to be honored on our twenty dollar bill!
SMALL SCREEN
The Crown (Netflix)
The Crown is back with Season 3, and it’s excellent! We have just watched the first three episodes and are totally engaged. Olivia Colman as Elizabeth is superb and Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip is excellent. The tone of this season so far seems more somber than Season 2, and the producers have made use of more archival footage of events. In episode 2, Helena Bonham Carter plays an exuberant, sometimes out-of-control Princess Margaret. I felt this episode conveyed very well her frustration at being number two, while also documenting the real, but often buried, affection between the two sisters.
Poldark (PBS)
The final season of Poldark and the final episode have aired and we will have to survive our Sunday nights without the brooding handsomeness of Aidan Turner (Poldark), the dogged patience and determination of Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), and their nemesis, George Warleggan, crazed yet perhaps in the end more human than we expected. It was a memorable last season with plenty of action along with tying up loose ends for Dwight and Caroline and Drake and Morwenna. I will miss these characters! The reassuring thing is that I can always go back and re-watch the series on PBS Passport.
Note: Text ©JWFarrington. Header photo of Harriet Tubman courtesy of history.com
