What Fiction are you reading this week, June 23, 2024?

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3. Not everyone loves Crawdads

I really strongly dislike, almost hate, this book. I was born and raised where it is allegedly set. It is unrealistic and often factually wrong. It gets the North Carolina coast so wrong in most every way -- geography, distances, flora, fauna, and most everything else. A few examples:

The distances in the book just don't work. You can't make a day trip from the coast to Asheville for a little shopping, certainly not 60+ years ago. The crucial bus trip was also impossible.

She mistakenly places Greenville, NC in the Piedmont of NC. I suspect she mixed it up with Greenville, SC which is in the Piedmont of that state.

Fire towers were not placed directly on the coast. Those closest to the Atlantic are about 15-20 miles away.

The most egregious error is that there are no hurricanes destroying nearly every thing in their paths. The hurricanes in NC in the 1950s were exceedingly destructive, so much so that North Carolinians often describe history as being before or after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. On the south barrier islands, almost every building was destroyed. Those in this book would not have been spared.

And don't get started on the plot itself.

Anyway, not everyone loves this book or even likes it.