Crow Lake review by Blondie Reads

A slow burn, but --as a result-- all the more able to affect readers.
Crow Lake (Mary Lawson) to me had a similar feel to The Girls. At least in terms of kids taking car of each other in a somber yet communal Canadian envronment. It concerns four kids whose parents are killed in a car accident. The two older boys, Matt and Luke, end up providing for and taking care of the family, which is rounded out by the narrator, Kate, and, Bo, the littlest girl.
Wrapped up in this story is the idea of self-sacrifice versus selfish giving. Selfish giving. what? Well, hang on with me and I'll explain. Just before the accident, Luke has won a scholarship to teaching college, something that everyone (the wider family, the neighbors) agrees he should take advantage of. But in the hierarchy (or should I even say) stereotyping of this particular family, Matt is considered the one with the real intellect. Luke, well aware of this and also the oldest, decides he will sacrifice his scholarship and get working so he can support the family and keep the house and make room for Matt to get a scholarship and attend university. Selfish giving. With this sacrifice Luke does not have to endure the pressure of being the family's Hope for Higher Learning. That's a lot of pressure.
Matt, of course, being equally giving, can't stand this but he accepts it only to have to give up his university place for another reason (which you will find out). When he does this, the side effect is that the girls are even more likely to enjoy a formal education, particularly our intrepid narrator, who used to go to the ponds with Matt and learn homegrown marine biology lessons.
And yet Kate cannot forgive Matt, though he is clearly the sibling to which she is closest. Often happens that way I guess. Strong emotions are strong emotions, and the strength of them does not change even as they flip from good to corrosive.
But what is masterful on the part of the author, I think, is that for so many pages I read along with Kate, and agreed with her and agreed with her until...very subtly, I began to think that maybe she was unfair and narrow-minded and too strict, and perhaps not even half the person that her brother is, intellect aside. And perhaps the kind of person you are does not have only to do with your intelligence...
And my heart grew two sizes that day.
I'm only half kidding. It's a wonderful narrative shift when you start to get an idea that maybe a little sister's view of things is narrow, and certainly doesn't take into account other good things in life besides formal education. Things like, families staying together and surviving. She was right about Matt: he's pretty smart, and I would add: he is certainly not dead yet. For all that his education has been self-directed, it's not a bad one. And it can continue throughout his life.
Thank you, Mary Lawson. This was a worthy book. And it reminded me of the Boxcar Children, one of the best children's book series ever. Have you guys read this series? Find it. That and now Crow Lake (though devised for distinct audiences) are valuable reminders that children are not just children. They are young and often intelligent people, with amazing powers not only to adapt but to take on incredible responsibility.

Crow Lake

April 18, 2007

BOOKS: Crow Lake, Mary Lawson (2002)
Kate Morrison is a zoologist, teaching at a university in Toronto, a full day's drive from her childhood home in northern Ontario. She's invited home for her nephew's 18th birthday party, an invitation which stirs mixed feelings. As Kate narrates the events of the year when she was seven, we learn the history of the Morrison siblings.Kate's parents were killed in a car crash that year, and she and her younger sister, Bo, were left in the care of their older brothers, Luke and Matt; at 19 and 17, the boys were barely old enough to take care of themselves, much less of two small children. Everyone's plans were changed by that car crash, and Crow Lake is principally concerned with the slow revelation of how those plans were changed, how the siblings resent one another for those changes, and how they've spent the last twenty years misunderstanding one another's motives and feelings.And I do mean slow. This is a book where very little happens, and it takes forever for it not to happen. It's also a book in which the narrator and author withhold information from us, encouraging us to misunderstand things just as badly as the characters do.Yet there is much to admire here. Lawson's characters, even the supporting ones, are vivid and fully realized. I was particularly fond of Mrs. Stanovich, the most aggressively helpful of the neighbor ladies; she is part of Lawson's perfect understanding of the occasionally oppressive nature of small-town community. The relationships among the Morrison siblings are convincing, and Kate's hero-worship of big brother Matt feels precisely right.But in the end, whatever surprises are to be found in the story derive from Kate's willfully not telling us everything she knows, and omitting crucial details at key points along the way. I found it a frustrating reading experience, and when it was over, I thought that a more straightforward, direct narration could have boiled the whole thing down into a really fine short story. I certainly look forward to Lawson's next book, but I hope it doesn't work so hard to generate phony suspense.