Where the crayfish sing (Canal+): where does the title of the film come from?

Where the crayfish sing, this is the title of the film broadcast on Tuesday April 18, 2023 at 9:09 p.m. on Canal +, but also of the novel from which it is taken. But why did the author title her book like this? Entertainment TV tells you everything.

Tuesday April 18, 2023 at 9:09 p.m., Canal+ is broadcasting Where the crayfish sing. We follow the young Kya Clark (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, the actress of the series War of the Worlds on Canal+ and Normal people on France 5), who lives alone in the marshes of Barkley Cove. After the body of Chase Andrews, star of the local high school and his American football team, is discovered, she is arrested and thrown in jail to await trial for murder. His only fault? Preferring the company of the birds of the swamp to that of the inhabitants of the neighboring village whom she distrusts, and who reciprocate her well, since it is solely on the basis of her unfounded reputation that “the girl of the swamps”, like everyone else nicknamed her, is suspected of having killed a man.

An unknown eclipses Michelle Obama

Released in theaters in 2022, Where the crayfish sing is the film adaptation of the eponymous novel published four years earlier. A veritable literary phenomenon, this book has sold several million copies worldwide. The success of Where the crayfish sing was all the more resounding because no one saw it coming. Indeed, this is the very first novel by Delia Owens, a completely unknown retired American biologist and zoologist, who had previously only written non-fiction books devoted to African fauna. This author, whom no one knew, even paid for the luxury of doing better than Michelle Obama’s long-awaited memoir. It was enough to attract the attention of Reese Witherspoon, who very quickly positioned herself to produce the film.

A title inspired by… his mother!

But why did Delia Owens title her book Where the crayfish sing ? The novelist explained it to our colleagues from Paris Match. “I was blessed to grow up in southern Georgia, with a wonderful, beautiful, talented mother, who studied math, but above all who loved the outdoorsshe says. In my childhood, she encouraged me to venture into the forest as far as possible: ‘Go, go where the crayfish sing!’ It was his way of saying to me: ‘Go into the forest, put your feet and your hands in the mud.’ For a long time I thought it was a common southern expression. But it was a family saying that she got from my grandfather“. Delia Owens confides that she never would have imagined the publishers approving this title, which she herself qualifies as “bizarre“. She also readily admits that “crayfish are not as popular pets as puppies“. And while the journalist of Paris Match objects to her that these charming crustaceans do not sing, she brings the following clarification: “What my mother meant by that is that if I went far enough in nature, alone, and really felt it, then I would hear the crayfish sing. In other words, I had to listen to what nature had to say to me.“. Here is the explanation of this title as poetic as it is enigmatic!