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

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Lawson's debut skillfully drew me in to care about all of her characters, leading me to wonder - what happened? The community I grew up in was larger than Crow Lake, less isolated, much less homogeneous, and less remote, but it was isolated enough that people depended on each other, and took care of each other. I spent even more time than usual, then, thinking about issues of family, home and childhood, and I have no doubt that that had an influence on the novel. The youngest daughter, Bo, is only two, very self-willed, thumb-sucking and in need of constant attention; Kate is just beginning to find her identity and shape her dreams; everyone is fragile. As an adult, however, she feels increasingly distant—from Matt (whom she now pities for having passed up an academic future), from her boyfriend and colleague Daniel, from her students, and from life in general.

Lying in the heart of the Algonquin backcountry, Burntroot Lake takes several days’ travel by paddle and portage to reach. Major and minor players alike are fashioned with care, and I reference old Miss Vernon, she of the rattling teeth and long whiskery jaw, 100 years old and a most extraordinary storyteller.I hesitate to share this, but since I've published articles half-assedly alluding to it ( Me and My Electra Complex and The Truth about the Making of The Trouble with the Truth), I don't know why I should be embarrassed; but I am. 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. Kate’s parents are killed very early in the narrative and the burden of raising two little sisters falls upon the two boys in the family, twenty year old Luke and eighteen year old Matt. Travelling north by canoe from Lake Opeongo, you could paddle right through Big Crow Lake on your way to the area’s larger lakes, but you would be missing out.

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. It was a New York Times bestseller, won the McKitterick Prize and spent 75 weeks on the bestseller lists in her native Canada. Food, heat and protection are always available to the Nolan children even if it means that Katie has to work multiple jobs or even sacrifice some of her own needs. She says the children will have to be separated because the older boys will be unable to work or study while raising the younger girls.They are small worlds, after all, and if there are shelves or shallow places within them you feel as if you are seeing the whole of that world. Kate, the third child, narrates the story twenty years later, looking back on their childhood from her now removed life in Toronto. There are flashes of dry humour in the writing itself, and in the dialogue on which so much of the book's taut realism depends. I give my star rating based entirely on my emotional response to a book, regardless of how I have rated other books by the same author.