Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #841946 in Books
• Published on: 2003
• Format: Import
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Exceptionally Good Novel Of Exceptionally Touching Family
CROW LAKE is one of those wonderful novels you pick up and are immediately engrossed in the lives of the characters. Kate Morrison is the narrator and takes us back twenty years to the eventful year when she was seven years old. That's the year that an accident killed both her parents and left her and her one-year-old sister Bo and two older brothers, Matt and Luke, an orphaned family. Rather than allow the children to be split up among relatives, nineteen-year-old Luke makes the decision that he will forego college and care for his siblings. Life is hard but always interesting as the four survive by their wits and help from family and friends.

Mainly, this is the story of Kate and her love for her brother Matt. Matt has always been her role model, her idol and inspiration. It is he who first plants the idea of studying zoology in her head with his always entertaining trips to the nearby ponds on their land. Matt is the over-achieving academic of the family who hatches a secret plot with Kate. He will get his college degree and with the wonderful job he will land he can pay for her to attend college. When she graduates, the two of them will help send Bo and Luke.

Alas, the plan goes awry when a terrible tragedy at a neighbor's house spills over to the Morrisons and changes the course of all their lives. How Kate deals with this tragedy and its far-reaching effects on her will certainly give the reader a lot to consider about families and the place each child has in his or hers. This is a story of great love and great loss and the healing that takes many years to accomplish. It is a tale of resentment and jealousy played against the power of loyalty. It is an uplifting tale of succeeding against terrible odds and almost losing what is most important.

A Wonderful Novel
Mary Lawson's Crow Lake is a wonderful novel, a work that will blow away all expectations of what it really is all about. The novel, which is narrated by Kate, a scientist in her late twenties, begins with the death of both of Kate's parents in a car accident, an accident which leaves Kate and her three siblings orphans. I know what you are thinking--sounds like Oprah, sounds predictable, we see where this is going. Well, it's none of those things and it will take you some place else. Lawson delves into the depths of family relationships, of familial expectations and love. One of the things that makes this book different is Kate's narrative style. We follow the story of what happened after her parents were killed, as that story somehow collides with her present story. She has been invited back to Crow Lake, doesn't know if she can handle it, doesn't know if she should take her current boyfriend. Her current predicaments are all caused by what happened to her family so many years ago and it's fascinating and thought-provoking. Mary Lawson has given us a terrific novel, an engaging read. Highly recommended.

INSIGHT INTO FATE'S OBSTACLE COURSE
Crow Lake is reminiscent of books like "A Northern Light" and "Atonement". We follow the story of the books narrator, Kate Morrison, from age 7 to age 29. The untimely accidental death of her parents finds Kate and her siblings, Matt and Luke (the two older brothers) and Bo (her 1 ½ year old sister) facing choices and challenging decisions that alters each of their lives forever.

Lawson utilizes her writing talent to capture not only the plight of Morrison family but to surround them with an assortment of friends, family and neighbors equiped with noble hearts and curious idiosyncrasies.

I did have a problem with the "adult Kate" who came across as self-absorbed and unforgiving. It seems that for all her knowledge and formal education she has never been able to grow out of her adolescent mental image of Matt and as a result is left with unresolved feelings of guilt and a self imposed emotional isolation.

Crow Lake serves as a warning to us all of the potentially destructive nature of hero-worship and challenges us to examine our definition of success and how we measure it. 3 1/2 STARS