Crow Lake

By: Mary Lawson

Narrated by: Amelia Sargisson

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch-perfect, you know from the opening moment 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.

©2002 Mary Lawson (P)2021 Penguin Random House Canada

Critic reviews

“Crow Lake is a remarkable novel, utterly gripping and yet highly literate. I read it in a single sitting, then I read it again, just for pleasure. I await her next work with eagerness (and a little envy).” (Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat)

“I didn’t read Crow Lake so much as I fell in love with it. This is one beautiful book.” (David Macfarlane, author of Summer Gone)

"A finely crafted debut...conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)