Crow Lake [Paperback]

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘A remarkable novel, utterly gripping…I read it at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it.’

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

‘full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity…a compelling and serious page-turner’

‘Lawson’s evocative storytelling…knows just how to draw the reader on…this is a novel of disappointed hopes and self-delusion, but it has a feel-good finish. '

'A remarkable novel, utterly gripping-I read it at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it.' Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat

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 prot-g-, 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. (20021018)

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel, so quietly assured, so utterly unputdownable, and with an emotional charge so perfectly controlled, that you know at once that this is the real thing - a literary experience to shout about, a book to lose yourse --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Mary Lawson was born and brought up in a farming community in Ontario. A distant relative of L. M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, she came to England in 1968, is married with two grown-up sons and lives in Surrey. (20021018)

My great Grandmother Morrison fixed a book-rest to her spinning wheel so that she could read while she was spinning, or so the story goes. And one Saturday evening she became so absorbed in her book that when she looked up she found that it was half-past midnight and she had spun for half an hour on the Sabbath day. Back then, that counted as a major sin.
I'm not recounting that little bit of family lore just for the sake of it. I've come to the conclusion recently that Great Grandmother and her book-rest have a lot to answer for. She'd been dead for decades by the time the events occurred that devastated our family and put an end to our dreams, but that doesn't mean she had no influence over the final outcome. What took place between Matt and me can't be explained without reference to Great Grandmother. It's only fair that some of the blame should be laid at her door.
There was a picture of her in my parents' room while I was growing up. I used to stand in front of it, as a very small child, daring myself to meet her eye. She was small, tight-lipped and straight, dressed in black with a white lace collar (scrubbed ruthlessly, no doubt, every single evening and ironed before dawn each day). She looked severe, disapproving, and entirely without humour. And well she might; she had fourteen children in thirteen years and five hundred acres of barren farmland on the Gaspe Peninsula. How she found time to spin, let alone read, I'll never know.
Of the four of us, Luke, Matt, Bo and I, Matt was the only one who resembled her at all. He was far from grim, but he had the same straight mouth and steady grey eyes. If I fidgeted in church and got a sharp glance from my mother I would peer sideways up at Matt to see if he had noticed. And he always had, and looked severe, and then at the last possible moment, just as I was beginning to despair, he would wink.
Matt was ten years older than I, tall and serious and clever. His great passion was the ponds, a mile or two away across the railroad tracks. They were old gravel pits, abandoned years ago after the road was built, and filled by nature with all manner of marvellous wriggling creatures. When Matt first started taking me back to the ponds I was so small he had to carry me on his shoulders - through the woods with their luxuriant growth of poison ivy, along the tracks, past the dusty box-cars lined up to receive their loads of sugar beets, down the steep sandy path to the ponds themselves. There we would lie on our bellies while the sun beat down on our backs, gazing into the dark water, waiting to see what we would see.
There is no image of my childhood that I carry with me more clearly than that; a boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, fair haired and lanky; beside him a little girl, fairer still, her hair drawn back in braids, her thin legs burning brown in the sun. They are both lying perfectly still, chins resting on the backs of their hands. He is showing her things. Or rather, things are drifting out from under rocks and shadows and showing themselves, and he is telling her about them.
`Just move your finger, Kate. Waggle it in the water. He'll come over. He can't resist...'
Cautiously the little girl waggles her finger; cautiously a small snapping turtle slides over to investigate.
`See? They're very curious when they're young. When he gets older though, he'll be suspicious and bad-tempered.'
`Why?'
The old snapper they had trapped out on land once had looked sleepy rather than suspicious. He'd had a wrinkled, rubbery head and she had wanted to pat it. Matt held out a branch as thick as his thumb and the snapper chopped it in two.
`Their shells are small for the size of their bodies - smaller than most turtles - so a lot of their skin is exposed. It makes them nervous.'
The little girl nods and the ends of her braids bob up and down in the water, making tiny ripples which tremble out across the surface of the pond. She is completely absorbed.
Hundreds of hours, we must have spent that way over the years. I came to know the tadpoles of the leopard frogs, the fat grey tadpoles of the bullfrogs, the tiny black wriggling ones of toads. I knew the turtles and the catfish, the waterstriders and the newts, the whirlygigs spinning hysterically over the surface of the water. Hundreds of hours, while the seasons changed and the pond life died and renewed itself many times, and I grew too big to ride on Matt's shoulders and instead picked my way through the woods behind him. I was unaware of these changes of course - they happened so gradually, and children have very little concept of time. Tomorrow is for ever, and years pass in no time at all. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.