HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Crow Lake: A Novel by Mary Lawson
Loading...

Crow Lake: A Novel (original 2002; edition 2006)

by Mary Lawson

Series: Struan (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
2,3711066,423 (3.88)274
Fiction. Literature. HTML: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.
Centerstage 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.
Praise for Crow Lake
??A finely crafted debut . . . conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret.???Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
??The assurance with which Mary Lawson handles both reflection and violence makes her a writer to read and watch. . . . [Crow Lake] has a resonance at once witty and poignant.???The New York Times Book Review

??Crow Lake is the kind of book that keeps you reading well past midnight; you grieve when it??s over. Then you start pressing it on friends.???The Washington Post Book World

??A touching meditation on the power of loyalty and loss, on the ways in which we pay our debts and settle old scores, and on what it means to love, to accept, to succeed??and to negotiate fate??s obstacle courses.???People

??Lawson??s tight focus on the emotional and moral effects of a drastic turn of events on a small human group has its closest contemporary an
… (more)
Member:co_coyote
Title:Crow Lake: A Novel
Authors:Mary Lawson
Info:Seal Books (2006), Mass Market Paperback, 368 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:Fiction

Work Information

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson (2002)

  1. 10
    The Island Walkers by John Bemrose (lkernagh)
    lkernagh: Same evocative prose, wonderfully drawn characters and mesmerizing storytelling.
  2. 00
    The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (sombrio)
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 274 mentions

English (101)  Spanish (2)  Dutch (1)  German (1)  Hebrew (1)  All languages (106)
Showing 1-5 of 101 (next | show all)
I was looking for a novel set in Northern Ontario and Lawson was recommended to me. I had no idea how good this book is. It reminded me of Margaret Lawrence and Alice Munro

It also reminded me of the realism of Swede Frederick Bachman and his Beartown Trilogy. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
Crow Lake, a rural community in Northern Ontario, is the setting for this thought-provoking novel narrated by Kate Morrison as a child and then as an adult. Kate, 7, and her baby sister, Bo, have two much older brothers when tragedy hits the family. Luke and Matt are in their late teens and determined to keep the family together despite difficult challenges. The members of the community provide whatever assistance they can. Matt excels in academics and qualifies for a full university scholarship to the overwhelming admiration and support of Luke and Kate. Matt has always been Kate's mentor in exploring the ponds and their environment. When a choice he makes that involves another Crow Lake family leads to the dissolution of his dream, the adult Kate, immersed as an academic, finds it difficult to comprehend what might have been for him.

This novel is very well written and provides insight into the Morrison family dynamics, as well as those of their neighbors. I have found the books written by Canadian authors to be very engaging. Mary Lawson is no exception. ( )
  pdebolt | Oct 28, 2023 |
I've had a bit of a fiction reading block lately. I think it's a mental bandwidth thing - I just don't seem to have the patience for that first stage of reading when you've not got hooked in yet. I picked up Crow Lake in the secondhand bookshop as I figured it would be 'easy reading' to ease me back in, and indeed it hit the spot.

This is don't-think-too-hard fiction. Summer reading fodder. The narrator's parents were killed in a car crash when she was a young girl, and the book alternates between the aftermath, as her brothers work to keep the family together, and her present day reluctancy to return 'home' to her siblings.

It was an enjoyable enough page-turner and got me back to reading fiction again, but I'm not going to rush to recommend it. There was nothing standout about it, and the ending disappointed.

3.5 stars - chicken soup sort of reading. Comforting but not gourmet. ( )
  AlisonY | Sep 3, 2023 |
Crow Lake is the story of four children growing up on a rural farm who endure a tragedy that changes the trajectory of their young lives. To complicate matters, they live next door to another very dysfunctional family, and their lives intersect in unexpected ways. This book easily earns four stars for its suspenseful, moving storytelling. Sometime you just want to read a book that is well paced, engaging, and tugs at your heart a bit, and Crow Lake completely fits the bill. The characters were also interesting and nicely developed. I would definitely reach for this author again. ( )
  Anita_Pomerantz | Mar 23, 2023 |
A gently reflective and yet compelling story about the lives of four young people whose lives are turned upside down one day when our narrator, Kate, was seven years old. The setting is rural Canada and Kate and her 17 year old brother Matt share a fascination with nature, science, wildlife, and most especially the ponds which are near their house. 20 years on and a zoologist and Kate thinks she has outgrown her childhood upbringing and her rural siblings. Can she unpick her history and her emotions? A beautifully written novel which almost feels like it isn't going anywhere in places but which is gently drawing you along a journey of discovery. ( )
  ArdizzoneFan | Jan 16, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 101 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

Belongs to Series

Struan (1)
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
For Eleanor,
for Nick and Nathaniel,
and most of all
for Richard
First words
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.
Quotations
...in an ideal world, effort, like virtue, is rewarded, and it simply makes no sense not to act as if it's an ideal world. (p. 225-6)
...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. (p. 289)
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (4)

Fiction. Literature. HTML: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.
Centerstage 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.
Praise for Crow Lake
??A finely crafted debut . . . conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret.???Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
??The assurance with which Mary Lawson handles both reflection and violence makes her a writer to read and watch. . . . [Crow Lake] has a resonance at once witty and poignant.???The New York Times Book Review

??Crow Lake is the kind of book that keeps you reading well past midnight; you grieve when it??s over. Then you start pressing it on friends.???The Washington Post Book World

??A touching meditation on the power of loyalty and loss, on the ways in which we pay our debts and settle old scores, and on what it means to love, to accept, to succeed??and to negotiate fate??s obstacle courses.???People

??Lawson??s tight focus on the emotional and moral effects of a drastic turn of events on a small human group has its closest contemporary an

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.88)
0.5
1 9
1.5 2
2 37
2.5 3
3 142
3.5 44
4 286
4.5 42
5 169

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,186,386 books! | Top bar: Always visible