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

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All in all, it was an interesting book, but the aloofness (in generous terms) of the main character made it sometimes hard work to want to work with the story and see the characters open up about their lives. The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake. We hope they will enrich your experience of this brilliant novel. Introduction Crow Lake, Lawson’s first book, was published when she was 55. The manuscript was rejected for four years before she landed an agent and a publisher. Before that, she wrote what she described as formulaic short stories for women’s magazines. Plot Synopsis Mom and dad are happy and proud. After dinner, they drive the car to town to buy a suitcase for Luke while the kids wait at home. Both parents tragically die in a car accident. Crow Lakeis 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

There is something about water, even if you have no particular interest in the life-forms within it”. Was Matt doomed to let Kate down in some way? Do you think it' possible for any young man to live up to such heroic expectations? Why? A. The honest answer is, I don’t know. The novel came from a short story, and the short story came from a single sentence, which came into my mind one morning without explanation and out of nowhere. It was, ‘My great grandmother fixed a book-rest to her spinning wheel so that she could read while she was spinning.’ You must understand: I had never thought that I would really love anyone. It hadn't been on the cards, as far as I was concerned. To be honest, I had thought that such intensity of feeling was beyond me."Priority of education. Baby Kia attends school exactly one day in her life, which does not prevent her from becoming a popular author of books about swamp fauna in the future, while the heroes of "Crow Lake" see learning as the key to solving most problems and for them schooling is a real daily work. Detective is not love. Here and there there is a detective line with a murder, secondary to the plot, but adding tension to it. At the same time, the love line almost does not play a role. For both heroines in their relationships with men, love-friendship is much more important than love-passion. The second world war comes and the town's youths sign up, to a boy; or, in Arthur's case, try to do so - he is rejected on account of flat feet. And, come the Dieppe raid, there is a communal tragedy: many households receive one of those numbing telegrams. At the war's end, Arthur finds himself almost the only survivor of his generation. A.I loved it. Initially when I answered this question, I wrote ‘I loved every minute of it.’ My husband, reading it through, scribbled, ‘That’s a load of bull. You did not. I was there.’ So for the sake of absolute accuracy, I’ve deleted ‘every minute of’.

So the same day I'm holding my cousin's 14 hour old baby in my arms, and the knowledge that my own mother won't be there when I hold my children in my arms for the first time- or any time- comes searing through my blood, I find this book. How do you imagine things would have turned out if the children had been separated, as Aunt Annie had arranged? How do you think it would have benefited and/or impeded their growth as individuals and as a family? Q. What do you think lies behind the anger and resentment between the two brothers, Matt and Luke, which results in violence? 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.’

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. Crow Lake explores the connection people hold for the land on which they are born, a common theme in Canadian literature. While some are satisfied to stay in the isolated farming community, others want to explore the wider world, which is likely possible only by going to college or university. In this way, higher education provides a means of betterment, or even freedom. Other themes in the novel include domestic abuse, family dynamics and sibling rivalry. Class rivalry, too, is hinted at as a mature Kate struggled with her feelings about the family she left behind. Sequel I have pursued your dream single-mindedly; 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." Perhaps it is hardest for Kate. Losing both parents at seven years old. Such a vulnerable age. Her fear is palpable. If one of her brothers is late coming home, she is certain, until she sees his face, that he is dead too. It's heartbreaking. When you think about it, how often do you get a window into a grieving seven year-old? Though the book is fiction, it has the vividness of an autobiography. Set against the wild terrain of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape, this universal drama of love and misunderstanding recounts a family’s tragic and moving past. Poignant, funny, and utterly unforgettable, Crow Lake is a deceptively simple masterpiece of literary fiction.

Orphanhood. In both books, the main character is an early orphaned girl from a large family, the scene is a picturesque wilderness, far from civilization. The Crow Lake community opened its arms wide to the Morrison children after their parents were killed. How does this generosity conflict with the community’s collective reaction to Laurie Pye’s disappearance? Why is this? I came across it on Goodreads. Written by a Canadian author (that I haven't read before) only added to my desire of placing it on my WTR list; and, Do you think Kate' resentment and distaste toward Marie will lessen as she rebuilds her relationship with Matt? Understatement was the rule in our house. Emotions, even positive ones, were kept firmly under control. It was the Eleventh Commandment, carved on its very own tablet of stone and presented specifically to those of Presbyterian persuasion: Thou Shalt Not Emote."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 It seems that the comparison of this novel with "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens is inevitable. In fact, there are many parallels between them, in a variety of evaluation planes. Looking at what are the similarities and differences? Crow Lake isn't exactly Avonlea, though. This is no sweet and sentimental Hallmark movie. There's a darker edge to this story of four orphaned siblings learning to cope and survive in the aftermath of the sudden deaths of their parents, and the ways in which their fates collide with the secretive and troubled family from the farm down the road. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison and her siblings were bound together by loss. None of them could have expected the tumultuous times ahead—least of all Kate’s older brothers, Matt and Luke. Twenty years later, the sacrifices they made and the promises they broke would continue to reverberate through their lives and the quiet rural community of Crow Lake. A. I think setting too much store by any ideal, however admirable, can be dangerous. It can take over; it can damage your sense of proportion and blind you to other things.