El’s Reviews > Where the Crawdads Sing > Status Update

This seems an appalling book. It's written "nicely". The descriptions of nature are elegant: gentle, calming, appreciative, nostalgic. But this is not a pastoral novel, and its portrayal of all humans is classist, sexist, racist, and condescending. Not one character encountered so far is created to elicit anything beyond shallow, distant pity. So far, I have no idea why an artist would be moved to write it.