This lot should be sent to prison too: Where the Crawdads Sing reviewed

Where the Crawdads Sing is based on the bestselling book (by Delia Owens) that I picked up from one of those three-for-two tables at Waterstones and always thought I’d read but for some reason never did. I can’t now say the film’s not as good as the book and send everyone involved to prison, which is a pity, as that was most satisfying. (See last week’s review of Persuasion.) Still, it’s always interesting to find out what they’ve done with a book you haven’t read and, based on this, it was a lucky escape. The film is so cliché-ridden there’s a point where an entire courtroom gasps and I laughed. Not proud, but it was beyond my control. Could I send everyone involved to prison anyway? For cocking up a book I haven’t read?

Fortunately, I attended the screening with someone who had read it. She described it as ‘one up from trash, like Bridges of Madison County’ and was invaluable because there were so many narrative gaps I needed filling in even if the answer was always the same: ‘There’s a lot more on that in the book.’ So why wasn’t it in the film? No idea. This tells the story of Kya (a painfully earnest Daisy Edgar-Jones) who, abandoned as a child, has brought herself up in the swampy wilderness of North Carolina and is charged with the murder of her ex-lover. She is meant to be a creature of nature but looks, I have to say, like an Instagram influencer on her way to Zara. Or maybe Anthropologie.