It’s the Detail that Matters

Two books I have read recently capture this kind of detail in isolation as they tell the story of two women’s lives, one in fiction and the other in memoir. The books are Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and Self-Portrait by Celia Paul.

Title: Where the Crawdads Sing Author: Delia Owens Publisher: Corsair Year: 2018 Pages: 370 ISBN: 978-1-4721-5466-8

Set in the swamps and marshes of North Carolina, Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of Kya, a girl from a poor family living in a shack in the swamps who is left to grow up on her own. In the absence of other people, Kya relies on the swamp with its tides, creatures and plant life for comfort and learning. 

Delia Owens is a naturalist herself and her knowledge of the setting shines through the book in the poetic detail about the ecology of the marshes. The detail forms a fascinating background for what is essentially a coming of age novel but which includes an element of crime fiction. The plot revolves around a crime Kya is accused of committing in her early twenties and the courtroom scenes are made all the more dramatic by taking Kya out of her natural setting. 

Where the Crawdads Sing is a book for our times. It offers an escape into another world but also teaches us how to observe the natural world.

The second book, Self-Portrait, is a memoir by Celia Paul, a British artist whose works are held by major art galleries in the UK, Europe and the USA. Paul is also known for her ten-year relationship with Lucian Freud, a famous artist and grandson of Sigmund Freud. In Self-Portrait, Celia Paul includes this relationship in her memoir but also writes extensively about her artistic practice. 

Title: Self-Portrait Author: Celia Paul Publisher: Penguin Random House UK Year: 2019 Pages: 212 ISBN: 978-1-78733-184-6

Celia Paul’s dedication to her art is the driving force of her life. Until the death of her mother, she painted mainly portraits of her family (her mother, father and sisters). To focus on her art, Paul simplified her life, developing a daily routine which allowed little variation and which excluded the distraction of the baby she had with Lucian Freud (her mother looked after the boy in Cambridge while Paul lived on her own in London).

For me, the pleasure of this book lies in its honesty and in the depth of the author’s reflections about her life and her art. It is as if by setting up her own constraints and keeping her focus contained, she was able to achieve attention to detail, not just in her writing but in her painting.

The colour plates of her work reproduced in this hardback book and her insights into the artistic decisions and techniques she adopted in creating them are equally fascinating.

As in Where the Crawdads Sing, the impact of this book lies in its finely observed detail and beautifully wrought visual language.