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Q. For you, what was the importance of the Ponds? Clearly the symbol of a bond of closeness between Matt and Kate but the strong emphasis placed on biological study is evident. Is this an area you yourself have studied in the past?
Crow Lake - Penguin Books UK
Community: while the Kia family are outcasts and outcasts, whom no one in the neighboring town respects, and the townspeople do not support the girl left alone, the Morrisons are not left with care, help them and take care of them. I first went to Struan when I read her first novel, Crow Lake (2003). I returned when I recently read, her latest novel Road Ends (2013). I don’t know how I missed The Other Side of the Bridge which was written in between these two in 2006, but I am so glad that I found it. This is the story of two brothers, Arthur and Jake, at odds throughout their lives and the tragedies that be fall them. Lawson has so skillfully developed these characters and we come to know them so well that the events seem inevitable. It is also about the woman who tears them even further apart. In many ways, it is also a coming of age story of a young man, named Ian, the son of the town Doctor whose mother has just abandoned him and he carries burdens of his own. It was like a drink of cool water in the desert and being eaten alive by army ants, both at the same time." Luke rises to the tragedy and fights to keep what remains of their family together. He fights more literally to preserve the family ideal of higher education, punching Matt to keep him from quitting school. But Matt's entanglements with the neighbouring farm family, brutalised and violent, bring further tragedy for Kate.
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Almost - for there is also Jake. But reviewing good manners now require silence; suffice it to say that Jake re-appears, driving a red and cream Cadillac; the separate strands of this elegantly constructed story are pulled together, and it rolls unstoppably towards both its denouement and its bitter end. Tragedy abounds in the novel, but such is its humanity and its wisdom that the effect is not dismaying, but somehow reassuring. Appalling things happen, and are done, but in the last resort ordinary decency somehow wins out. This is a fine book - an enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate. I look forward to Lawson's next. As the novel progressed, though, the ponds took on a wider significance. They were, as you say, as symbol of the closeness between Matt and Kate, but to me they also came to represent Kate’s childhood – the period of ‘innocence’ before she was, as she saw it, betrayed by Matt. The trips with Matt to the ponds survived the tragedy which overtook the family at the beginning of the book, and partly through them, Kate managed to survive it too. But they did not survive Matt’s ‘betrayal’, and in an emotional sense, neither did she. In fact, the ponds were the scene of the crime. 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.’
Crow Lake - Quill and Quire Crow Lake - Quill and Quire
stars — All the metaphors I kept thinking up to describe this evoked some variation of "warmth" - ironic for a novel set in the chilly wilderness of Northern Ontario. A warm piece of homemade pie you wish could last at least another dozen bites. The warmth of a hug from a special friend that neither one of you wants to pull away from too soon. A warm, cozy fire around which local legends are told. Truth can be stranger than fiction: this month brings four good first novels (already strange), each about the intertwinings of two or more families. One of them is a work of art. This is my second Mary Lawson book - it won't be the last. In some senses not a lot happens in this book. Like the other one I read it is about life in small town Canada. It ranges over many years and what happens in the world at large does impinge on it. However it is far
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author Mary Lawson excels at writing realistic fiction! When four siblings are suddenly left orphaned, her slow-burn story shows how these children coped, and how their community rallied around them; Like the Morrison siblings in this novel, I come from a family of two boys and two girls, although thankfully our parents are still alive and healthy. Lawson examines with unsettling candor the volatile and sometimes violent dynamics between siblings, even and perhaps ESPECIALLY in families that care deeply about one another.
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Family: while the girl from "Where the Crayfish Sing" is faced with the monstrous selfishness of relatives who abandon her to the mercy of fate, the four Morrison children are united by the misfortune that befell them and makes them work together, and distant relatives do not stand aside. Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world. Ecology. Both are imbued with a love of nature, largely devoted to the problems of ecology and environmental protection from the destructive effects of human civilization. Hawthorn, Tom. "Crow Lake." The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published March 09, 2020; Last Edited March 09, 2020.
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Loved seeing the varied and multiply story-lines through the eyes of Kate as a young person (especially the trips to the pond with Matt) and then with Daniel as she tried to explain her family to him and then her reunion with Luke, Matt, Bo and her nephew's birthday party and discovering her brother's long-held secrets. The story details the struggles of four siblings who were orphaned when their parents are killed. It’s told through the eyes of the adult sister, Kate, who was seven years old at the time of the deadly car accident. She reflects on her childhood as she reluctantly prepares to return for a family gathering. Her account slowly reveals details of the broken dreams and sacrifices that they all made in their efforts to keep the family together. Nothing very dramatic happens yet it elegantly portrays events that affect most families – hopeful aspirations, misunderstandings, missed chances and sibling rivalry. Ostensibly I spent 6 hours on a train yesterday, but really I was at Crow Lake in northern Ontario. I managed to consume the entire novel in this short period of time. The best science fiction fires our imagination at the same time as making us look inward. Here are the must-read sci-fi classics novels. 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, bestselling author of Chocolat
Mary Lawson | The Booker Prizes Mary Lawson | The Booker Prizes
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.”— Washington Post Book World Hawthorn, Tom. "Crow Lake". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 09 March 2020, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/crow-lake. Accessed 01 November 2023. The Fortune Men, Great Circle, A Town Called Solace, Bewilderment, China Room and The Promise are among the books longlisted this year.
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Lawson nails it with that tiny bit of dialog. Although it’s been 18 years since my parents’ car accident, some days it feels like yesterday—other days it feels like I never had parents. And I completely relate to Katherine’s numbness, the reluctance to feel anything about anyone—if you care, there’s a good chance that they will get yanked away from you. Not caring seems like your only defence against heart wrenching pain. The only problem is that is doesn’t work. People like Katherine’s boyfriend Daniel worm their way into your life and you reluctantly begin to care about them, all the while struggling to see them as temporary and frustrating the hell out of them, as they wonder what is wrong with you. For the first few weeks following the death of her parents, Kate believes that she was “protected from the reality by disbelief.” How did she carry this defense mechanism with her throughout her childhood and into adulthood? What are some examples?
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