recommended reading: Crow Lake

Published in The Post-Star (G13)
1/26/06

Crow Lake, by Mary Lawson.

This quiet, poignant work of literary fiction is narrated by Kate Morrison, a young woman who grew up in Crow Lake, a tiny farming community in northern Ontario. When she was 7 years old, her parents died in a car accident, leaving Kate and her baby sister in the care of their two teenage brothers.

Kate's level-headed, yet slightly uncertain voice draws readers quickly into her interior world, and Lawson's beautiful writing keeps us there. It's a sad story, but not as tragic as it might appear on the surface.

The story turns our heads slowly back and forth between Kate's past and present. Even as a child, she was introverted and thoughtful -- her favorite activity was perching on the edge of a pond with her big brother and watching the lives of water bugs and tadpoles.

As an adult, she carries that passion for observation into a successful career as an invertebrate zoologist. She's great at spotting changes in the lives of microscopic organisms, but seems blind when it comes to major matters of the heart.

Although she seems to have found the man of her dreams (Daniel, also a zoology professor), she evades his attempts at emotional intimacy. It's hard to fault her, though -- as she points out, love and loss have been closely linked in her life.

In explaining herself to Daniel, Kate must explain the history of her family and of Crow Lake itself, where she jokes (accurately) that the Eleventh Commandment is something along the lines of "Though shalt not have or express emotions, at any cost."

She learns, of course, that approach simply doesn't work forever. Suppressing her feelings keeps her from realizing an important truth, which finally dawns on her as the novel draws to a close.

This isn't a thriller, yet Lawson spins real suspense out of the emotional threads connecting the characters in Crow Lake, and takes her time wiping away the cobwebs shrouding their shared past. It's a book that stays with you long after you have closed the cover.

If you like this, try "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini, which has a very different setting (Afghanistan) but is similarly narrated by a young man who must take a hard look at his past in order to understand his present.
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