Looking Back - Crow Lake

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Fiction

2002

Finished on March 5, 2002

Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)

Publisher's Blurb:

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, this deceptively simple masterpiece about the perils of hero worship leapt to the top of the bestseller lists only days after being released in Canada and earned glowing reviews in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, to name a few.

My Original Thoughts (2002):

Emotional. Drew me in from the very beginning. What a marvelous book. Great sense of place. Bo is a great character! Stubborn, willful two-year-old who provides humor to a grim story.

My Current Thoughts:

Since reading Crow Lake, I've gone on to read The Other Side of the Bridge and A Town Called Solace, both of which I enjoyed greatly. Reading my review of The Other Side of the Bridge, I notice that I mentioned that I read Crow Lake twice, something I'd forgotten I'd done, but I still want to read it again. I have not gotten around to reading Road Ends, so I'll make that a priorty before I go back to reread the others. Lawson is a gifted writer and I look forward to more of her stories.