a fabulous read, beautifully written with vivid characters. It's a short, easy read but I found myself very moved by the representation of the Morrison family. This novel is never overly sentimental or gushing - it's one which will stay with me for a long time and whose characters I will remember fondly - something which doesn't happen that often to me!

Since there isn't the option to give 4.5, I've given it 5, only because I'm probably too harsh at times....

6/20/22 Update after reading it a second time: even more moved the second time. This book grows with the reader.

Original 2017 Review
I feel such a commonality with this book—Mary Lawson's style, the movements, the issues, the dialogue that is perfect pitch and as natural as breathing—that it almost renders me speechless. It's a story about children raising children. About no grownups. About being propelled into adult responsibility as a child and the delusions of survivor's guilt. There's a short Q&A with Lawson (http://www.marylawson.ca/qa-video/) where she qualifies the story as complete fiction. I believe her. The commonality I feel is not that I've lived this story because I haven't. What I feel is that, were I Canadian and from similar land, I too might have imagined it as she did.

Recently Goodreader Larry Hoffer wrote: "Did you ever get the feeling you and an author would be great friends (or perhaps mortal enemies), simply based on the books they write and the way they tell stories?" I have that feeling about Mary Lawson. She seems to think the same thoughts and write them the way I would, and it's spooky and I love it and I love this book. It quietly and gently knocked the wind out of me.

Thanks to Goodreaders Esil and Zoeytron for recommending Crow Lake in their comments about my review of n  Road Endsn. I've found a new favorite writer.

5/25/17 A very personal note after a day of reflection:

I hesitate to share this, but since I've published articles half-assedly alluding to it ( Me and My Electra Complex and The Truth about the Making of The Trouble with the Truth), I don't know why I should be embarrassed; but I am.

Until I read Crow Lake, I never realized the full extent that survivor's guilt has clouded my vision of my dead mother, whose book I edited and published a couple of years ago. I'd imagined that she suffered terribly in life because she never had my solo writer's life--a life that she might have enjoyed more than marriage and a whole bunch of kids who she didn't really want to take care of. (Don't worry, I worked all that stuff out a long time before she died, and we became best adult girl friends.) In my opinion, Mary Lawson offers the best a fiction writer can offer: the possibility for a reader to suddenly have a dark room lit up and realize the monsters you've installed there don't exist. Never existed. That's why, a day after finishing this masterful quiet novel, I'm still vibrating.

Beautifully written novel of a family of four children who must cope with the death of their parents. The love in this story is redeeming and the words evocative. I especially liked how the author weaved the theme of what it means to be educated throughout the whole book but bringing home a surprise conclusion at the end. I am quite sure she is familiary with Dorothy Sayers and her thematic storytelling on relationships and education.

Vienos šeimos istorija, kuri pasakojama lėtai, ramiai, bet labai įtraukiančiai. Kurį laiką gyvenau kartu su Keite, Bo, Metu ir Luku, kuriems likimas nepagailėjo rimtų išbandymų. Tik atrodo jau bando stotis ant kojų ir kažką planuoti į ateitį, ir vėl kažkoks “netikėtumas” (o gal kaip tik - labai tikėtinas gyvenimo vingis), kuris visų gyvenimus apverčia aukštyn kojomis. Daug teigiamų emocijų ši knyga nepaliks, gal kaip tik toks slogutis lieka ją perskaičius. Nors knygos pabaigoje tikrai atsiranda šviesa tunelio gale

This is one of those books that I read many beautiful reviews of, I saw it at a used book shop a while back and picked it up.

I am glad that I did.

This is the story of Kate and her family. She is the 3rd of 4 kids who grew up in a very rural farm village in Ontario. She is the narrator telling you this story as an adult.

Her oldest brother, Luke, was the first in their whole family to get into college (and receive a scholarship). Brother Matt, a year behind Luke in school was following those footsteps too and he is expected to do the same. Kate was 7 years old and baby sister, Bo (short for Elizabeth) is probably just about 2.

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.

The story of their lives after this heartbreaking event is what you will read.

This isn’t a happy flowery book but it is well written and even though it is bleak, you will find yourself savoring the story as Kate tells it to you.

I had just finished reading a bloody thriller and began my first book by Mary Lawson - a novel completely at the other end of the spectrum. Her style and voice was such that I felt that she was sitting next to me on the couch telling the story. The novel takes place in a small Northern Ontario farming community and revolves around the future lives of four children whose parents were killed in an accident. I thoroughly enjoyed this and will be reading more of Mary Lawson.

Siblings …Luke, Matt, Kate, and Bo are orphaned by the sudden death of their parents.
They live in the beautiful, very far north, rural area of Ontario called Crow Lake.
Dreams of the future for these intelligent older brothers, are put on hold because the parents didn’t leave much money behind and the boys wanted to care for their young sisters, (instead off going off to college) so that they could keep the family together.
It’s a lovely story filled with hardship and sacrifice also laced with humor and the goodness of a community
4.5.

This book will stay with me for a long while. Hauntingly tragic but a beautiful story and so well done.

Crow Lake is a unique (to me) story about a family and the fate of 4 siblings after the tragedy of their parents' early death. Their story is narrated by Kate, one of the siblings, as a young girl and as an adult, and switches seamlessly from past to present. The most important themes are the effects of loss and how choices affect the trajectory of one's life. It's also about (mis)perceptions and survivor guilt.

This novel captivated me. It is a somewhat slow yet compelling read. The characters and the setting are so well drawn I felt like I knew Kate and her siblings and that I could easily step into the farm setting on which they lived. My only disappointment was that the novel ended.

It is very difficult to believe that Crow Lake is a first novel. I look forward to reading more by Mary Lawson.

Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 4
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Emotional impact:
Overall rating: 4

داستان در مورد چهار خواهر و برادر است که پدر و مادرشان را ازدست می‌دهند و با چالش و دست و پنجه نرم کردن با مشکلات زندگی و عدم حضور حضور والدین مواجه می‌شوند. داستان فوق العاده زیبا ولی غم‌انگیز در مورد عشقی که بین اعضای یک خانواده میتونه وجود داشته باشه بود. واقعا داستان تاثیرگذاری بود. داستان از زمان دختری بیان می شود که ماجرا را از گذشته تعریف می کند و بخش‌های مهمی از داستان شامل همین توصیفات اوست از آن رنجی که به او تحمیل شده...

"...The Eleventh Commandment is Thou Shalt Not Emote, the Twelfth is Thou Shalt Not Admit To Being Upset, and when it becomes evident to the whole world that you are upset, Thou Shalt On No Account Explain Why."

"So I did not, in the months to come, say to Daniel that sometimes he made me feel that he would like to put my life and everything in it on one of his little glass slides and slide me, like some poor hapless microbe, under his microscope, where he could study my very soul."

Hiding from ourselves is the best way to hide from everyone else. Or is it the reverse?

On the surface, a story about tragedy within families and the outcomes that shape what comes next, with our will or against it. On a deeper level, an examination of how those silences, how those unspoken self-stories build emotional dams that stop relational flows.

"That was the real heart of it. I had never loved anyone as I loved Matt, but now, when we saw each other, there was something unbridgeable between us, and we had nothing to say."

How does one move from love, admiration, dependence, comfort...to awkwardness, distance, estrangement? One misplaced step at a time. One misunderstanding or misread at a time. One decision at a time. One ill-formed perception and judgement at a time. Like a rock chip in a windshield, the changing relational weather creates run after run until one can no longer see clearly.

Silence is golden, until it's not.

This one ticked a lot of what I like in a read. Interesting characters, well-written prose, a deep look into what trauma can do to us, the struggle to be real and open and honest, the ways we derail ourselves, and how "life happens when we are making other plans". The basic story of four kids struggling in the aftermath of parental death is interesting enough, but Lawson provides some real depth by being in the narrator's head as she struggles to overcome the ongoing effect of that loss and what came after. The refrain running through my head...."You are only as sick as your secrets."

And that Bo character...Lawson has to have parented small, noisy, stubborn children!