Crow Lake

This is a debut novel of astonishing power, and an intimate dissection of the heartbreaking nature of sacrifice. Canada is a vast land of wide open spaces, yet Mary Lawson's novel focuses on the tiny community of Crow Lake with a suffocating intensity. Here, the Morrisons and the Pyes have held sway for generations. The Morrisons have always set great store by education, ever since Grandmother Morrison took to reading a book while she was spinning. But tragedy strikes, and the carefully laid plans for the education of the Morrison children are shelved as the four young orphans have to fight for their very existence. Meanwhile, life on the isolated Pye farm continues under a conspiracy of silence, as the sins of earlier generations seem destined to be repeated. Even more sacrifices are demanded of the Morrisons, sacrifices that Kate, the narrator of this tragic story, finds too painful to contemplate. She has left the stifling closeness of life at Crow Lake to carve out a new life for herself in Toronto as an invertebrate zoologist, and believes she has thrown off the old family ties, but as she returns to Crow Lake for a birthday party she is forced to confront her past mistakes; it is time to learn to forgive and to make her peace with her family. Mary Lawson?s novel represents certain moral expectations that seem out of place in modern society - unflinching family loyalty, obedience and an acute sense of what is right. Sacrifice and a sense of duty are unquestioned, whether it is Luke Morrison insisting that he will support his siblings whatever it takes, or Marie Pye keeping silent about her father's brutality. Kate moves uneasily between her two worlds - Crow Lake where time seems to have stood still for generations and modern life in Toronto. How she eventually reconciles these contradictory parts of her own nature is the crux of this intensely moving novel. Crow Lake is a compelling work that will haunt the reader long after the final page has been turned. (Kirkus UK)