Now the Crawdads sing at Waterstones Piccadilly…
A little bit of the Deep South has come to central London, courtesy of Waterstones Piccadilly which has an atmospheric window promoting the film – and of course, the novel from which it came – of Delia Owens’ bestselling Where the Crawdads Sing.
The window features a flat-bottomed boat like the one on which the novel’s heroine Kya – the so-called ‘marsh girl’ – navigates the inlets, hidden waterways and coastal marches of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Here are her hessian sacks of supplies, her coiled rope for securing the boat, the oyster shells she has collected and even a large bull frog who has come to join her on voyages.
A skein of birds rises over the horizon on a sunset backdrop painted dusty orange and pink, while strips of coloured plastic form the dappled waters capturing the rays of the setting sun. Here are damsel flies too, and crickets, caught amid the bullrushes and grasses.
Lean in further – this shop has an unusual curved window, dating from its time as Simpsons menswear store which opened in 1936 – and you can hear an audio tape of the sounds of this watery jungle: the incessant scrape of cicadas, the croaks of bullfrogs, the melancholy cries of the marsh birds, the odd sharp shriek which punctuates the semi-silence It is very evocative.
The book has now sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and is one of the bestselling novels of all time. The film stars Daisy Edgar Jones who recently featured in another film adaptation of a book, namely Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which was filmed by the BBC.