Crow Lake
  • Published:
    Mar-2002 (Hardcover)
    Jan-2003 (Paperback)
  • Formats:
    Print / eBook / Audio
  • Main Genre:
    General Fiction
  • Pages:
    320
  • Rating:
  • Purchase:
  • Share:
Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page 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.

Praise for Crow Lake

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

“The assurance with which Mary Lawson handles both reflection and violence makes her a writer to read and watch. . . . [Crow Lake] has a resonance at once witty and poignant.” -- The New York Times Book Review

Crow Lake is the kind of book that keeps you reading well past midnight; you grieve when it's over. Then you start pressing it on friends.” -- The Washington Post Book World

“A touching meditation on the power of loyalty and loss, on the ways in which we pay our debts and settle old scores, and on what it means to love, to accept, to succeed -- and to negotiate fate's obstacle courses.” -- People

“Lawson's tight focus on the emotional and moral effects of a drastic turn of events on a small human group has its closest contemporary analogue in the novels of Ian McEwan.” -- The Toronto Star
Click on any of the links above to see more books like this one.



EDITIONS
Sign in to see more editions
    •  
    • Sep-2005
    • Dial Press
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0385337639
    • ISBN13: 9780385337632
    •  
    • Feb-2003
    • Vintage (UK)
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0099429322
    • ISBN13: 9780099429326
    •  
    • Mar-2003
    • Vintage
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0676974805
    • ISBN13: 9780676974805
    •  
    • Apr-2003
    • Delta
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0385336136
    • ISBN13: 9780385336130
    • First Edition
    • Mar-2002
    • Dial Press
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 038533611X
    • ISBN13: 9780385336116
    •  
    • Jan-2003
    • Turtleback Books
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0613628942
    • ISBN13: 9780613628945
    • Library Binding
    •  
    • Aug-2004
    • Turtleback Books
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0606310827
    • ISBN13: 9780606310826
    • Library Binding
    •  
    • Nov-2008
    • Random House
    • eBook
    • ISBN: 0440334365
    • ISBN13: 9780440334361
    •  
    • Jan-2013
    • Vintage
    • eBook
    • ISBN: 1448155762
    • ISBN13: 9781448155767
    •  
    • Mar-2003
    • Ulverscroft Large Print
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0708994504
    • ISBN13: 9780708994504
    • Large Print
    •  
    • Aug-2003
    • Center Point
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 1585473324
    • ISBN13: 9781585473328
    • Large Print
    • Library Binding



View the Complete Mary Lawson Book List