Crow Lake is that rare find a first novel so quietly assured so compelling & with an emotional charge so perfectly controlled that you sense at once that this is the real thing
- a literary experience to relish a book to lose yourself in & a name to watch. Here is a gorgeous slowburning story of families growing up & tearing each other apart in rural Northern Ontario where tragedy & hardship are mirrored in the landscape. Centre stage are the Morrisons whose tragedy is insidious & divisive. Orphaned young Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt's protegee her curious fascination for pond-life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist she can identify organisms under a microscope but seems blind to the tragedy of her own emotional life. She thinks she's outgrown her family who were once her entire world
- but she can't seem to outgrow her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.