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On another level though, Daniel represents what Matt should have been, and this is a problem for Kate. When she looks at Daniel, she sees all that Matt has lost.
Mary Lawson | The Booker Prizes Mary Lawson | The Booker Prizes
I do have one criticism. Lawson is very heavy handed with her foreshadowing. On a few occasions irritation pulled me out of the narrative thinking, "Enough, already!" Some judicious editing could have easily corrected this flaw. A. I think setting too much store by any ideal, however admirable, can be dangerous. It can take over; it can damage your sense of proportion and blind you to other things. In clear prose that gorgeously fixes nuances so evanescent as to be rare, the novel unfolds an artful, inventive spectrum of opportunity and love and the 'accidental things' - principally in a few crucial months of Clare Menges Verey's life, but also in the smoking heaps left by her father's crash-and-burn marriages to her mother and first stepmother, which also produced Clare's sister Tamsin and brother Toby (there's a proliferation of babies on all sides). Matt, a brilliant student, has a strong connection with his sister Kate. He turns her into his protégée by introducing her to the scientific wonders to be found in one of the many ponds that dot their land. Matt earns scholarships and is preparing to leave Crow Lake when he becomes involved with Pye’s daughter, Marie. She has been made meek and pliant in the face of her father’s murderous rages. An unplanned pregnancy leads Marie to reveal to the Morrisons that her father killed her brother. She fears he will kill her. Luke takes charge and calls a doctor and the police. When the police arrive at the Pye farm, Calvin shoots himself with a shotgun. Matt abandons his plans for higher education, marries Marie, and remains on the farm.Interwoven with the story of the Dunn family is that of Ian Christopherson, the son of the town doctor who as a teen works weekends and summers on the farm of the adult Arthur. Ian has a huge crush on Arthur's wife and describes being in her presence: As the novel progressed, though, the ponds took on a wider significance. They were, as you say, as symbol of the closeness between Matt and Kate, but to me they also came to represent Kate’s childhood – the period of ‘innocence’ before she was, as she saw it, betrayed by Matt. The trips with Matt to the ponds survived the tragedy which overtook the family at the beginning of the book, and partly through them, Kate managed to survive it too. But they did not survive Matt’s ‘betrayal’, and in an emotional sense, neither did she. In fact, the ponds were the scene of the crime. Kate says in the book, ‘By the following September the ponds themselves would have been desecrated twice over, as far as I was concerned, and for some years after that I did not visit them at all.’
CROW LAKE | Kirkus Reviews
some of the characters weren't as fully fleshed-out as i would have liked, but on the whole, that did not have adverse affects. my biggest issue was that i figured out one of the revelations too early, so when it was finally written out, i wasn't surprised, more annoyed that it occurred exactly as i had deduced. A.I grew up in Southern Ontario, but my family spent a lot of time in the North, and it is the North I think of when I think of home. 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.
Job Board
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.
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson | Goodreads The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson | Goodreads
In Crow Lake, the narrator, Kate, quite consciously examines how much of the dire events affecting her family are a result of character, how much of circumstance and how circumstance shapes character. This assured, lucid narrative, less literary but still full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity, takes you into a family in northern Ontario. The father is the first of his farming clan to have finished secondary school; his job in a bank has justified the sacrifices made to get him there. 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 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.) She is a marvelously skilled writer, painting the landscape with as much care as she does the people who inhabit it, and telling us something about those people by measuring their reactions to nature itself. 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.I liked this book for many reasons. It has humor. It covers widely varied topics, all of which I found interesting. Sibling rivalry. Parents’ attachments to their children…. and let’s admit it, we do not respond identically to each child. How do we / should we choose what we want to do with our lives? I mean what job we ultimately choose. Do we choose, or is it fate that decides for us? Are we destined for a certain occupation, given our particular personality? And what is the value of a job? Must we all be academics? The book is set in Canada during WW2, this too was interesting! When you think of a conventional family, stereotypical images come to mind. How does each of the four Morrison children fit in that image? Which child took on which traditional family role? What are some examples? Q. Did you enjoy writing this novel? And did the final ending mirror that which you had in mind when you started to write?
Crow Lake - Penguin Books UK
She also has a glamorous best friend who has a sexy boyfriend who, it turns out, through an ingeniously arranged sequence of inadvertently divulged information and a recovered earring, Clare once slept with and forgot. The man did not forget. The community I grew up in was larger than Crow Lake, less isolated, much less homogeneous, and less remote, but it was isolated enough that people depended on each other, and took care of each other. There is a downside to small communities of course – they are hell on earth for those who don’t fit in – but I remember it with affection, and Crow Lake is in some respects a tribute to it. There is something about water, even if you have no particular interest in the life-forms within it”. 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 In a gorgeous, slow-burning story, Mary Lawson combines well-drawn characters, beautiful writing, and a powerful description of the land to tell the emotionally pitch-perfect story of personal struggles, familial bonds, and the power of forgiveness. Questions and Topics for Discussion
A. The honest answer is, I don’t know. The novel came from a short story, and the short story came from a single sentence, which came into my mind one morning without explanation and out of nowhere. It was, ‘My great grandmother fixed a book-rest to her spinning wheel so that she could read while she was spinning.’ 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." outside the maples flamed red and gold and the air was as clear and pure as springwater. Inside was the leaden weight of boredom; outside was the sharp tang of wood smoke and the urgency of shortening days. You could smell the winter coming. You could see it in the transparency of the light and hear it in the harsh warning cries of the geese as they passed overhead. Most of all, you could feel it. During the day the sun was still hot, but as soon as it dipped down behind the trees the warmth dropped out of the air like a stone." There isn't any surprise revelation at the end - the book didn't need that - but it was a sense of awakening for the protagonist, Kate. She finally opens her eyes and loses some of the blinders she had on for most of her life. I felt bad for not liking her some of the time because I kept reminding myself she was a vulnerable person drowning in tragedy at one point and that I probably just couldn't understand her view enough, but I can't help it - there's a small selfish, unlikable vibe she has going down.
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