This author's work I have read quite out of order. But I liked this one much better than "Road Ends". It's 4.5 star level in its characterizations all around. Yes, my favorite of this Northern Ontario locale of hers that I have read. We know 3 or 4 families well at Crow Lake this time, but we know the narrator's family the most deeply. Smart people, and some like Matt are still their own worst enemies in the anxiety their smarts seem to inflame about their future.

Kate is not my favorite class of narrator/protagonist (rather a whiner and selfish to the bone core), but we are lead to an understanding of what it looks like from her perspective. Luke was drawn so well, and Bo was captured in words just superbly.

This isn't a happy tale, and there are multiple types of dysfunction and suffering. And yet this book was not a downer over all. There were two or three people that kept it from being far more than just a conceited tale of "how I made good while the others blew it" junket that you get all the time now in the moderns. As if financial success and educational superiority tips all the scales for self-satisfaction.

I loved the way this one ended, with some realizations to rock the insular reserve. There was much to think about after reading this book. Especially about what neighbors mean to people in different places and different time periods. I would like to discuss this one in a book group with Returning Adult program college students with a medium age of 48-52, or in that category of schooling, even if not in the older bunches. Because there are some assumptions about schooling and intellect and intelligent pursuits here, from that time or any time period, that are realistically way off.

I guessed the ending about 70 pages before the author revealed it. I think she tried too hard to keep the reader dangling as to how the book would end. I mean...I get it, many books have a surprise ending but in between one hopes the telling of the story is good. When it’s really really good even without a surprise ending, I can give a book 5 stars. If I guess the ending before the ending and the telling of the story is somewhat blasé...boring...that affects my rating.

The story is told in the first person by 27-year-old Kate Morrison who has a PhD in Biology (Invertebrate Ecology) and does research and teaches at a Canadian university. She is invited to her brother’s sons’ birthday party, and she accepts the invitation with trepidation because she and the older brother, Matt, have lost a close bond they used to have.... the reasons for the close bond and then it is breaking is told in painstaking detail in the book.

3 stars. I know the book was well-liked by others. It just didn’t do much for me.

Spectacular! My first book by Ms. Lawson and look forward to reading the others on my TBR list.

Loved seeing the varied and multiply story-lines through the eyes of Kate as a young person (especially the trips to the pond with Matt) and then with Daniel as she tried to explain her family to him and then her reunion with Luke, Matt, Bo and her nephew's birthday party and discovering her brother's long-held secrets.

Well developed main characters and those of her aunt, the townswomen who did their best to help the children after the sudden death of the parents and the men who owned the various businesses and hired the boys to provide financial assistance in the early days when the Kate and Bo were young.

I really liked this book. I love Kate’s voice, as a child and as an adult. Every character is sufficiently developed that I felt as though I knew them well and that I would immediately recognize them if I ever met any of them. I thought the family relationships and the psychology of each character were presented in an authentic and believable way. The writing is lovely too. No complaints about any of the above.

There was constant foreshadowing in this book. There was also more than one major event including a big reveal. I didn’t really need any of that, and I came close to guessing all of the mysteries, such as they were, before the reader is officially informed. I really liked the story anyway but it was the slice of life scenes and the characters and their relationships that made the book work for me. I didn’t need the extra drama or tension.

I thought it was a great book though. I read it for my real world book club. Because of the libraries being closed during the pandemic I borrowed an e-copy from my library and chose the Kindle format. (I started it before and ended it after I broke my clavicle on my dominant side, so a lot happened in my life the 5 days I spent reading it.)

ETA: Especially given the tragedy, I particularly appreciated the humor!

I give my star rating based entirely on my emotional response to a book, regardless of how I have rated other books by the same author. As this is the first Mary Lawson novel I have read, and also Mary Lawson's first novel, these 5 stars are justified by the fact that I was so immersed in the story, and so involved in the character's lives, that when I saw I only had 20 pages left, my first thought was "That can't be right". Alas, it was, but I could have continued for another 100 at least.

Of course, in my case, emotional response is also triggered by the excellence of the prose, and Mary Lawson delivered on that end as well. It is hard to believe that this is a first novel. The writing is confident and assured, the transitions between past and present are seamless, and you can see and hear what is going on in every place in the little town of Crow Lake. The characters are not perfect, but perfectly human. A quiet little novel giving us 20 years in the life of a small community, this puts the author on my "must read everything she writes" list.

Crow Lake..by Mary Lawson...Kate grew up on a small farm near Toronto. Her boyfriend Daniel, never experienced community, just lived here and there, even abroad a year at a time. He urged Kate to tell him about her past and her life growing up. That is what this book is about. Joys and struggles of four children, losing both their parents in an auto accident, when they were young. The author did a great job making Kate's memory so vivid.

Скажу одразу: магія простих історій Мері Ловсон досі діє. Я не знаю як саме, але їй вдається цими реалістичними сімейними історіями тримати інтерес, не впадати в сентиментальність, але змусити співпереживати.

Але цей роман мені сподобався меше, ніж «По той бік мосту» через сюжет. Четверо дітей, дорослішання на фермі без батьків, обмеженість ресурсів на здобування освіти, нереалізовані мрії. Не знаю, не вистачило чогось, але авторку точно продовжуватиму читати.

It's always a good day when I discover a new author. A friend of mine gave me Crow Lake and said it was a really good book and I should read. But did I listen? No! I just put it on the bottom of my to-read pile and forgot about it. Looking back I could kick myself! Mary Lawson narrates the most beautiful story of family love and difficult relationships amidst a tragic event. This is not a fast story. It is rather slow but the author draws you in with beautiful prose, teases you with a little mystery, and makes you care and love the family who struggles to survive and remain together. The story flows with honesty and truthfulness and concludes with a satisfying ending. Great debut and I look forward to reading more novels by Lawson.

This was a simply told and captivating family drama with a northern Ontario setting. I’ve never been there but the author’s observations of that area in Canada established such a powerful sense of place that the story came alive for me. I grew up in the high plains of eastern Colorado (Kent Haruf “territory”) and there were parts of this novel that echo my own rural background – especially her description of life for farm families.

The story details the struggles of four siblings who were orphaned when their parents are killed. It’s told through the eyes of the adult sister, Kate, who was seven years old at the time of the deadly car accident. She reflects on her childhood as she reluctantly prepares to return for a family gathering. Her account slowly reveals details of the broken dreams and sacrifices that they all made in their efforts to keep the family together. Nothing very dramatic happens yet it elegantly portrays events that affect most families – hopeful aspirations, misunderstandings, missed chances and sibling rivalry.

I have several brothers and sisters of my own so parts of this story provoked reflections of my own life. I thoroughly enjoyed this finely crafted and bittersweet tale of survival and love of family.

I’m grateful to several people for turning me on to Lawson’s novels. They’re all so beautifully written, with well-rounded characters and imaginative plots that never lead me where I think they’re heading.

Crow Lake, her first novel, is no exception. It’s not my favourite of her works – that title rests with A Town Called Solace – but it’s an excellent read that offers a well-paced story, entertaining dialogue, and realistic depictions of family relationships.

As always, that’s coupled with evocative descriptions of a part of my country that I rarely get to visit.

I only wish Lawson were more prolific, but there’s now only one of her novels I haven’t been able to find on audiobook in my library. I might have to splurge and buy a copy.

This was given to me by a friend and is better than I expected. Am I on a roll? A story of family love and sacrifice coupled with a love for the outdoors. I learned things about pond life; that kids who live in the country can appear to be lying around doing nothing while they're learning things we're probably not teaching in school. And, of course, there was a learning about yourself and life with others aspect too.

2.5 rounded down

Based on other reviews I expected to enjoy this more than A Town Called Solace but personally I found this to be a less satisfying read overall. Touted as the story of four children coming to terms with a family tragedy, the book is more a story of one of these children, Kate (our narrator), revisiting and coming to terms with her childhood trauma and the events which followed it.

I've finished this novel thinking that it wasn't bad per se, but that I don't really have all that much to say about it. The writing grated at times ("Laurie was just one more dropped stitch in a family tapestry already fully of holes.") and none of the characters felt developed enough for me to fully invested in what happened to them.

I realise this review makes me sound like a grouch... perhaps it's time to accept that Lawson's novels are just not my thing...