Crow Lake: FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF A TOWN CALLED SOLACE

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Mom and dad are happy and proud. After dinner, they drive the car to town to buy a suitcase for Luke while the kids wait at home. Both parents tragically die in a car accident. Problems. Unlike the fabulous swamp robinsonade of a lonely girl, the difficulties of the Morrisons' children are real, and a young handsome guy who is forced to wash his sister's soaked diapers, instead of shooting girls or throwing acid at a disco, is an image that evokes lively sympathy. I feel such a commonality with this book—Mary Lawson's style, the movements, the issues, the dialogue that is perfect pitch and as natural as breathing—that it almost renders me speechless. It's a story about children raising children. About no grownups. About being propelled into adult responsibility as a child and the delusions of survivor's guilt. There's a short Q&A with Lawson ( http://www.marylawson.ca/qa-video/) where she qualifies the story as complete fiction. I believe her. The commonality I feel is not that I've lived this story because I haven't. What I feel is that, were I Canadian and from similar land, I too might have imagined it as she did. The story is told in the first person by 27-year-old Kate Morrison who has a PhD in Biology (Invertebrate Ecology) and does research and teaches at a Canadian university. She is invited to her brother’s sons’ birthday party, and she accepts the invitation with trepidation because she and the older brother, Matt, have lost a close bond they used to have.... the reasons for the close bond and then it is breaking is told in painstaking detail in the book.

Miss Vernon' stories about the history of Crow Lake suggest that some patterns can never be broken. How is this true and/or false for the Pyes and Morrisons? I have pursued your dream single-mindedly; I have become familiar with books and ideas you never even imagined, and somehow, in the process of acquiring all that knowledge, I have managed to learn nothing at all." Thanks to Goodreaders Esil and Zoeytron for recommending Crow Lake in their comments about my review of Road Ends. I've found a new favorite writer. From this tragedy, Lawson spins a magnificent tale of love, disappointment, and family dynamics. It is painful at times to watch these youngsters struggle with issues that would be too weighty for much older and cooler heads. The extra character in this book is the town of Crow Lake, itself. A small, isolated town, with one store, a church and scattered farms, it is described beautifully and plays as important a part in the unfolding history of the Morrisons as the children themselves.On his side, I believe Daniel is attracted to Kate partly because of her honesty. She does not pretend, to others or to herself. It is this which is her salvation, in the end – she is able to look at her ‘picture of how things are’, and see that it is wrong. author Mary Lawson excels at writing realistic fiction! When four siblings are suddenly left orphaned, her slow-burn story shows how these children coped, and how their community rallied around them;

I clearly remember the day that I put my emotions on ice—it was about a year and a half after the funerals and I remember thinking, “I’m so tired of crying.” So I quit. It has taken years to thaw that permafrost and I’m still unsure that the process is finished. Still a bit freezer-burned, I guess. That was the real heart of it. I had never loved anyone as I loved Matt, but now, when we saw each other, there was something unbridgeable between us, and we had nothing to say."

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All in all, it was an interesting book, but the aloofness (in generous terms) of the main character made it sometimes hard work to want to work with the story and see the characters open up about their lives. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison and her siblings were bound together by loss. None of them could have expected the tumultuous times ahead—least of all Kate’s older brothers, Matt and Luke. Twenty years later, the sacrifices they made and the promises they broke would continue to reverberate through their lives and the quiet rural community of Crow Lake.

A simple and heartfelt account that conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret. the plot is like a pebble dropped into a pond. It spreads out like ripples, taking me in, wondering what drove two siblings, who were exceptionally close, so far apart? How did the other characters fit in?Thank you for all the people who have talked about this for many years. I don’t know why it took me so long to read it, but I want to thank each and everyone of you. When Kate leaves for university, she takes with her a portrait of her great-grandmother, who had fixed a book rest to her spinning wheel so as to become educated even as she completed chores. Kate goes on to enjoy the academic career she feels should rightly have been her brothers’. Her long overdue return to Crow Lake, with boyfriend Daniel in tow, comes on the occasion of the 18th birthday of Matt and Marie’s son, Simon. Now a zoologist, Kate is estranged from her family and her roots in Northern Ontario, feeling she has outgrown them. Kate attended a conference in Edmonton to give a paper on the effect of pesticides on the life of still-water ponds.