Product Description

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so compelling, and with an emotional charge so perfectly controlled, that you sense at once that his is the real thing - a literary experience to relish, a book to lose yourself in, and a name to watch. Here is a gorgeous, slowburning story of families growing up and tearing each other apart in rural Northern Ontario, where tragedy and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. Centerstage are the Morrisons whose tragedy is insidious and divisive. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt's protege, her curious fascination for pondlife fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope, but seems blind to the tragedy of her own emotional life. She thinks she's outgrown her family, who were once her entire world - but she can't seem to outgrow her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2565 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Canadian writer Mary Lawson's debut novel is a beautifully crafted and shimmering tale of love, death and redemption set in the eponymous Crow Lake, an isolated rural community where time has stood still. Narrated by 26-year-old Kate Morrison, we dive in and out of the troubled woman's childhood memories over the passage of a year--when she was seven and her parents were killed in a motoring accident, leaving Kate, her younger sister Bo and two older brothers Matt and Luke orphaned. The proverbial can of worms is opened for our heroine when she receives an invitation to Matt's son's 18th birthday. The successful zoologist and professor, so accustomed to dissecting everything through a microscope, must suddenly analyse her own relationship and come to terms with her past before she forsakes a future with the man she loves. She is still in turmoil over the events of that fateful summer and winter 20 years ago when the tragedy of another local family, the Pyes, spilled over into their own lives with earth-shattering consequences. One dark night, a shivering Laurie, Pye's only son, stands mute in their porchlight, straining to share something with them but, startled, turns and runs away. The many strange, longing looks which pass between Matt and Marie, Pye's eldest daughter. And the awful night when Marie stands in their doorway whispering unspeakable horrors. In Kate's eyes, the Pye family drown out the hopes and dreams of her own in that one moment. But does the tragedy really lie in the past or is it in the present? Lawson's narrative flows effortlessly in ever-increasing circles, swirling impressions in the reader's mind until form takes shape and the reader is left to reflect on the whole. Crow Lake is a wonderful achievement that will ripple in and out the reader's consciousness long after the last page is turned. --Nicola Perry

Review
This is a debut novel of astonishing power, and an intimate dissection of the heartbreaking nature of sacrifice. Canada is a vast land of wide open spaces, yet Mary Lawson's novel focuses on the tiny community of Crow Lake with a suffocating intensity. Here, the Morrisons and the Pyes have held sway for generations. The Morrisons have always set great store by education, ever since Grandmother Morrison took to reading a book while she was spinning. But tragedy strikes, and the carefully laid plans for the education of the Morrison children are shelved as the four young orphans have to fight for their very existence. Meanwhile, life on the isolated Pye farm continues under a conspiracy of silence, as the sins of earlier generations seem destined to be repeated. Even more sacrifices are demanded of the Morrisons, sacrifices that Kate, the narrator of this tragic story, finds too painful to contemplate. She has left the stifling closeness of life at Crow Lake to carve out a new life for herself in Toronto as an invertebrate zoologist, and believes she has thrown off the old family ties, but as she returns to Crow Lake for a birthday party she is forced to confront her past mistakes; it is time to learn to forgive and to make her peace with her family. Mary Lawson?s novel represents certain moral expectations that seem out of place in modern society - unflinching family loyalty, obedience and an acute sense of what is right. Sacrifice and a sense of duty are unquestioned, whether it is Luke Morrison insisting that he will support his siblings whatever it takes, or Marie Pye keeping silent about her father's brutality. Kate moves uneasily between her two worlds - Crow Lake where time seems to have stood still for generations and modern life in Toronto. How she eventually reconciles these contradictory parts of her own nature is the crux of this intensely moving novel. Crow Lake is a compelling work that will haunt the reader long after the final page has been turned. (Kirkus UK)

Daily Mail
‘Beautifully written, carefully balanced, Mary Lawson constructs a history of sacrifice, emotional isolation and family love without sounding a false note’