After the death of her alcoholic and neglectful mother, Chrysalis (sorry - I didn't choose the name) doesn't eat and barely comes out from under her bed in the derelict California mansion she and her brother grew up in and have inherited, even when her adored brother Eddie comes home. He brings with him an equally attractive fellow of like age (thirtyish), Ralph, with whom Chrysalis instantly falls in love. Is The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done suicidally depressing or is it me? A tale of two little rich kids and their go-for-broke loves, it takes nihilism to new levels. Written by 'a star of the UEA writing course', it is stylish and formally innovative, being cast as a numbered outline, and journeys in several directions temporally, geographically, and factually, always at the height of cool. Janni Visman's Sex Education takes one strand of Accidents and makes a whole novel of it, showing two girls, Maddy and Selina, from pre-school best-friendship through adolescence, mutual young singlehood and maturity, at least in the case of Maddy. Selina couldn't exactly be said to be mature, though she is the one determined, in the most cutting way, to do everything first. 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.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson - January Magazine Reviews | Crow Lake by Mary Lawson - January Magazine

The idyllic atmosphere Lawson creates in these trips to the ponds tugs at all of us who can remember gleaming jewels of magic even in the midst of the most turbulent childhood. But this poem to relationship extends far beyond Kate's adulation of her brother.The dilemma is echoed or reinforced by a muted tension between the scientific bent of the Vereys and the 'arty' predilections of the Menges family, the fractured, extended clan at the heart of the book; and by the 'subtle fight of the female with the male... of female blithe confidence against male doubt'. The success of Mary Lawson's tender, vibrant first novel Crow Lake has been the sort of Cinderella story that gives middle-aged women writers (this one included) a lot of hope. It's one of those "overnight sensation after 20 years of effort" scenarios that implies a great deal of moral fiber and perseverance in the author. This trait of steadfastness (dare I say faith?) sounds loud and clear in the novel itself, which is so deep and dimensional, so polished and true, that it makes you wonder why agents weren't pounding down her door long before this. The Morrison siblings have been haunted by tragedy since the sudden death of their parents in an accident when they were young. As the girls age, the author's terse, factual style takes on greater strength, the facts get better. Maddy's acquiescence in the friendship feels like an unstated, unsolved mystery, but the upshot of the girls' unequal dependence is more moving than one could anticipate. They had gone into town to buy a suitcase. The fact that the Morrison family didn't even own one reveals worlds about their isolation in Crow Lake, but the suitcase is a powerful symbol of the fact that one of them was about to get out. Kate's older brother Luke, 19 years old and a diligent student, has just won a scholarship for teacher's college -- a sort of miracle for a family in which finishing high school was a luxury only earned after generations of sacrifice and toil.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson: 9780385337632 | PenguinRandomHouse

But such are the vagaries of the publishing biz. The important thing is that someone finally gave the 55-year-old Lawson a break, so that we now get to enjoy a heart-tuggingly beautiful piece of work by an author who clearly knows what she is doing. Intensity of feeling is not beyond her at all, but merely deeply repressed, a survival mechanism for coping with massive grief (but also a living out of the Morrison family edict: "Thou Shalt Not Emote"). This repression and its steep, life-sapping cost is familiar to so many of us who grew up with families where tightlipped reserve was the norm.Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world. Set in the harsh and beautiful landscape of the Canadian Shield, Crow Lake tells the story of a family bound together by loss. Orphaned young, the four Morrison children – Kate, Matt, Luke and Bo – struggle to stay together as a family and to fulfil the dreams passed down to them from their parents. Seven-year-old Kate worships her brilliant elder brother Matt, whose passionate interest in the natural world inspires her. But hero worship is a dangerous thing, particularly for the hero: Matt is all-too-human, and there are things about him that Kate does not know . I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each one of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler, bestselling author of French Braid

The Guardian The triumph of humanity | Penelope Lively | The Guardian

The whole of the spectacular Accidents in the Home - rich, lush and intricate as an Oriental rug - is poised on an excruciating tension about what matters in life: the 'real small accidental things' that alter it, as the tiniest mutations in cells can do, or 'the shimmering yielding fabric of opportunity and love'. Luke rises to the tragedy and fights to keep what remains of their family together. He fights more literally to preserve the family ideal of higher education, punching Matt to keep him from quitting school. But Matt's entanglements with the neighbouring farm family, brutalised and violent, bring further tragedy for Kate. A remarkable novel, utterly gripping...I read it at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it' Joanne Harris, bestselling author of Chocolat Memories. I'm not in favor of them, by and large. Not that there aren't some good ones, but on the whole I'd like to put them in an airtight cupboard and close the door." Well might Kate fear memories, for at the tender age of seven her small world shattered in an instant when both her parents were killed in a catastrophic car accident. 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.Poetry, indeed. Mary Lawson is a treasure, a new voice maturing into her gift in mid-life. A younger writer never would have caught all these nuances. Let us rejoice in the discovery of this subtle, graceful, late-blooming talent. | June 2002

Crow Lake | The Canadian Encyclopedia Crow Lake | The Canadian Encyclopedia

Truth can be stranger than fiction: this month brings four good first novels (already strange), each about the intertwinings of two or more families. One of them is a work of art.For a long time, it seems as if she's always ahead of the game, too, if only because she has the looks of a model and Maddy admires her far too much. Even more like Accidents is the cruel competition over boys. However, by the time they are 18, we can see that Selina, promiscuous and druggy, has pretty much ruined her life and that Maddy, gifted at clothing design, will be more or less OK. 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).