Death in principle I had known about; death in practiceno. I hadnt known that could happen. (p.30)
But whereas the story of A Death in the Family deals with the struggle of its child narrator to understand the full implications of his fathers death, the narrator of Crow Lake tells her story from a vantage point some twenty years after the traumatic event.
Kates narration as Lawson has written it is a complex interweaving of events in her present and events in her past, especially the first year following her parents death. Lawson is true to the reality that our adult recollections of childhood arecan only bethe memories of a child under the scrutiny of the adult that child has become. For better or for worse, we cannot retrieve anything more than we saw and felt at the time. And so, we come to take for granted that the way we experienced the events of our past and the interpretations we placed on them are no more and no less than the facts of our personal lifewho we are and who those closest to us are as well. And therein hangs the tale of
At first, it is not clear what the story of Crow Lake will be. Following an idyllic prologue, chapter one begins on an ominous note:
When the end came, it seemed to do so completely out of the blue…. We didnt know that the Pye nightmare was destined to become entangled with the Morrison dream. Nobody could have predicted that. (p.7)
Dark clouds on the horizon. We read on to a description of dinner at the Morrisons. We learn that the Morrisons are not generally an expressive lot. As Kates twenty-seven year old self recalls, the family recognized a number of supplemental Commandments to the usual Ten. For example, the Eleventh Commandment, carved on its very own tablet of stone and presented specifically to those of Presbyterian persuasion: Thou Shalt Not Emote. (p.9) Later, we learn that the Twelfth is Thou Shalt Not Admit To Being Upset, and when it becomes evident to the world that you are upset, Thou Shalt On No Account Explain Why. (p.36) We are introduced to older brothers Luke and Matt, and younger sister Bo, charmingly described as having a fine, fair fluff of hair that stood straight out from her head as if shed been struck by lightning.
I cant easily discuss the book further without giving away plot points that are better discovered on reading. Stop here if you want to experience the book as written, but please come back later.
Okay, you were warned. Disaster strikes the next day. In the penultimate paragraph of chapter one, Matt tells Kate that her parents have been killed. Kates reaction is finely drawn.
I remember being terrified that he would cry…. As if that would be the worst thing; much worse than this incomprehensible thing he was telling me. As if for Matt to cry was the one unthinkable thing. (p.19)
Yes, this is how a seven-year old might react.
But the death of Kates parents doesnt involve the Pyes at all, so the reason for Kates cryptic reference to the Pye nightmare remains unexplained. Indeed, it remains unexplained for another two hundred pages or so, and even then it is not until the last fifteen pages of the book that we understand what Kate has been obsessing over for two hundred seventy plus pages. It is to Mary Lawsons credit that she manages to keep up the tension without driving the reader completely crazy. Not only that, the denouement, is reasonably satisfying and (not withstanding that the French dénouement means untying) ties together just about everything that has gone before.
As I say, the tension is not unremitting. In fact I made a note to myself on page 27 that says I just realized that I had at this point forgotten to be worrying about the Pyes. But time and again there is a reminder that something terrible is going to happen (from the readers standpoint) that has already happened (from the narrators standpoint).
Ordinarily, to tell a story that happened in the past, you start with once upon a time and then proceed with A said this and B did that, then A did this and B did that and said that, and so on until you come to the end and then stop. The story of Crow Lake is told in a much more complex way. Events in the story are presented out of temporal order so as to illuminate extra-temporal themes, thoughts, and feelings. A case in point. In chapter three, Kate talks about her boyfriend Daniel (pp.35-37). She starts from a point in time at which she has told Daniel about her family and then recalls.
It was a long time before I told Daniel much about my family.
In the next sentence, she goes back to the beginning of that long time.
When we first started going out we exchanged bits of personal information as you do, but it was all very general.
And then back to even before thatbefore they started going out.
I knew quite a bit about Daniels background because a lot of his background was in the foreground, so to speak, right there at the university.
Now, she pops into the present.
Daniel is Professor Crane of the zoology department. His father is Professor Crane…. His mother is Professor Crane…. Its a little Crane dynasty.
Oops, that wasnt the real present. It was some kind of generic present, a present-tense recitation of facts learned in the pastfacts learned in the past and then later modified in the past as seen from still later in the past:
Or, as I learned later, its a small subsection of a large Crane dynasty.
Now, she takes us back much further into the past.
Daniels forebears roamed the cultural capitals of
Generic present:
Daniel is a curious man….
Back to the beginning of the relationship:
One evening when wed been going out for a couple of weeks he said, So tell me the story of your life, Kate Morrison.
Hearkening forward from that point:
I didnt know at the time, but that little request from Daniel was the beginning of what was going to be a problem between us.
Generic present, again:
I am not from a background where people talk about problems…
Hearkening further forward:
So I did not, in the months to come, say to Daniel that sometimes he made me feel that he would like to … slide me, like some poor hapless microbe, under his microscope, where he could study my very soul.
And back to the past, but still with awareness of things yet to come:
All that was in the future, however…
I couldnt figure out at the time why I felt such a resistance to the idea….
And all the way forward to Kates actual present.
But I now think that most of my reluctance was due to the fact that story of my lie is all bound up with the story of Matts life….
All this time-traveling in three pages! Its not that when an author chooses to narrate in the past tense he or she must always describe events in strict temporal order from earliest to latest. But it is unusual for the temporal discontinuities to come so rapidly one upon another; and it is a considerable accomplishment for Lawson to have deployed this rhetorical strategy so effectively.
The TV Guide summary of Crow Lake would be something like: From age seven, Kate has believed her brother Matts life story is a tragedy. Nineteen years later she realizes she was wrong. The key word is tragedy. In the last chapter, Matts wife Marie, hardly a person given to confrontation, nonetheless summons tremendous personal strength to confront Kate on precisely this issue:
[Y]our disappointment, your thinking his whole life is a failure…. thats been the hardest thing [for him]…. You think what happened is the great tragedy of [Matts] life. You can hardly look at him, you feel so sorry for him and so angry with him still.
Marie hits the nail on the head. Kate is stunned. Kates nephew Simon appears and the conversation veers back to uncontroversial matters. A few minutes later, Daniel notices that Kate is in a state and asks her whats wrong. Kate summarizes Maries accusation, protesting that its not true that she thinks Matts whole life is a failure, but it is true that what happened to him is a tragedy. Why does Kate insist on the word tragedy in connection with what happened to Matt? It all happened when Kate was seven. Tragedy is not a word ordinarily in the vocabulary of a seven-year old girl. On rereading, I found the answer. Its Miss Carringtons word.
When Aunt Annie comes after the funeral of the parents Morrison, Miss Carrington tries to make clear that Matt has the intellectual ability to obtain a scholarship to go to university. Aunt Annie, while sympathetic, replies that its just not possible. Money is too scarce. Miss Carrington, overheard by a curious and anxious Kate, tells Aunt Annie hyperbolically, You must understandit would be a tragedy if Matt did not go to university. Genuinely it would be a tragedy. (p. 58) Aunt Annie elaborates on the dire straits of the Morrison children.
Miss Carrington said bleakly, A tragedy then….
When Matt returns later, Kate tells him what Miss Carrington had to say:
She said you were the cleverest child shed ever taught. She said it would be a … tradegy … a tragedy … if you didnt go to university. (p. 63)
So nearly two decades later, Kate is still parroting Miss Carringtons word. The imperfectly understood traumas of childhood give rise to life decisions; and those decisions will rule our lives imperfectly for as long as we let them. We cant see them. We need others to draw our attention to them and to insist that we reconsider them from our adult standpoint. Kate is lucky that Marie cares enough about Matt to raise the issue, and Kate is lucky that her Daniel cares enough to insist on an alternate, adult, formulation.
Well, I agree with you about one thing, Kate. I do think theres a tragedy here. But I dont think its what you think it is…. [I]ts just a shame. Its not a tragedy. It makes no difference to who Matt is…. [M]y guess is that he came to terms with it a long time ago. The problem is, you didnt. And as a consequence, hes lost what he had with you. Thats the real tragedy. (p. 282)
To her credit, Kate responds to the challenge to her idée fixe. For the first time since she was seven, she looks back at her assumptions about Matt with new eyesas an adultrealizing that The weight of … years … of things unsaid, unresolved, had made strangers of us. (p. 286) Suddenly the future looks brighter.
Mary Lawson has accurately observed and portrayed the process by which one may, with only the best intentions, become estranged from reality, suffer thereby, and eventually find reality again. With the exception of Calvin Pye (whom I guess we didnt really meet face to face in the story), I was pleased to meet her characters and spend time with them. May we all find ourselves in such a supportive community.