Crow Lake: FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF A TOWN CALLED SOLACE

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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. 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). 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. 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

Mary Lawson - Penguin Books UK Mary Lawson - Penguin Books UK

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 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. 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.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. 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.

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

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.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