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CROW LAKE by Mary Lawson Kirkus Star

CROW LAKE

by Mary Lawson

Pub Date: March 5th, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-33611-X
Publisher: Dial Books

A finely crafted debut looks back to a young woman’s harshly beautiful childhood in rural Canada.

In Ontario, as in the whole of Canada, civilization disappears pretty quickly as you head any great distance north—and Crow Lake is very far north indeed, part of a region that was settled in the first place only because the government gave the land away for free. The Morrisons are fairly recent arrivals compared to their neighbors, and Robert Morrison moves there to work at the local bank rather than till the land. But his four children—Luke, Matt, Kate, and Bo—become homesteaders of necessity when both their parents are killed in an automobile crash. The eldest, Luke, passes up his college scholarship to stay home and help raise the family. He is particularly determined that his younger and far smarter brother Matt finish high school and win a scholarship, but Matt is more interested in working the farm than earning a degree. It is Kate, the narrator, who goes to college, eventually becoming a professor of zoology in Toronto. Unusually sensitive and emotionally fragile, Kate grew up in awe of Matt and came to share his fascination with pond life and biology. As an adult, however, she feels increasingly distant—from Matt (whom she now pities for having passed up an academic future), from her boyfriend and colleague Daniel, from her students, and from life in general. Is this just an early onset of midlife malaise? Or is there some unfinished business from the past that she needs to tend to? As she prepares to bring Daniel to visit Matt and his family, now living in what was once her childhood home, Kate finds herself in a state of quiet fear. Is it regret for the past? Or a dread of her future?

A simple and heartfelt account that conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret.