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

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Set in the northern part of Ontario, Canada in 1972, the book tells the story of three people brought together by fate and their life stories, which twist a narrative braid of remorse and grief, punctuated by a dark sense of humour. Everyone knows everyone else, and the novel's strength is that by its end the reader more or less does, too. Kate says in the book, ‘By the following September the ponds themselves would have been desecrated twice over, as far as I was concerned, and for some years after that I did not visit them at all. Well might Kate fear memories, for at the tender age of seven her small world shattered in an instant when both her parents were killed in a catastrophic car accident.

The Guardian The triumph of humanity | Penelope Lively | The Guardian

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. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not sure how I missed this on publication, but I won’t let that happen with the next book by Mary Lawson, which I sincerely hope she is writing. When a beautiful young woman comes into the community, the fragile balance of sibling rivalry tips over the edge.Selina couldn't exactly be said to be mature, though she is the one determined, in the most cutting way, to do everything first.

Mary Lawson | The Booker Prizes Mary Lawson | The Booker Prizes

The book ends with her struggling to come to terms with this view of their past and present relationships; the struggle is left unresolved but the final tone is optimistic. He is completely unlike the other males of his family (his father and his older brother Arthur) who are big, physical, hardworking and who love farming. Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural “badlands” of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape.Truth can be stranger than fiction: this month brings four good first novels (already strange), each about the intertwinings of two or more families. They are magnificently well-structured, simple but profound, with characters who stay with you forever. They live in the farming community Crow Lake, where their closest neighbors are the Pyes—including the father, Calvin, the son, Laurie, and two daughters, Marie and Rosie. The fractured family struggles mightily against the grinding rural poverty of Crow Lake, and the brothers conduct a fierce battle of wills to control their fate, until they both finally land jobs and the family gets some assistance from a neighbor. Sections set in the past take place approximately 20 years earlier, when Kate is a grieving seven-year-old.