Crow Lake – Mary Lawson

Crow Lake – Mary Lawson

I have been wanting to read this book for a long time – ever since I read that she was a relative of L.M Montgomery, but it was quite hard to get hold off eventually I found a copy at the Book Depository.

Here is the blurb …

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing—a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.
Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural “badlands” of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur—offstage.
Center stage are the Morrisons, whose tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt’s protegee, her fascination for pond life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope but seems blind to the state of her own emotional life. And she thinks she’s outgrown her siblings—Luke, Matt, and Bo—who were once her entire world.
In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harbored and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control, continually overturning one’s expectations right to the very end. Tragic, funny, unforgettable, Crow Lake is a quiet tour de force that will catapult Mary Lawson to the forefront of fiction writers today.

For all of you Montgomery fans this does have a bit of a Montgomery feel and there is a family called Pye! In this novel we know something happened between Matt and Kate, which severed their close connection. And I have to say when the thing was revealed I was disappointed. However, I loved everything else about this novel – the characters are particularly well-written, I just thought the climax was anti-climatic. I was swept away to this small northern Ontario town – the sense of place was brilliant particularly the Morrisons’ house.

This is a story about families and family conflict and the different methods different members employ to negotiate conflicts.  It is also about choices – and how much freedom people have to make decisions about their lives.

More reviews …

https://www.januarymagazine.com/fiction/crowlake.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/24/books/the-girl-she-left-behind.html

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