Crow Lake Review

Crow Lake, Lawson. No. The writing was perfectly adequate, but the structure of Lawson’s debut novel killed it for me. More specifically, the relentless, detailed, brutal foreshadowing killed it for me. It reminded me of nothing so much as watching a “non-fiction” tv show: “coming up after the break, you’ll meet three new contestants, one of whom wears a leg brace!” Probably because there are characters named Bo and Luke, I gave the foreshadower a Dukes of Hazzard drawl: “Now don’t y’all think that there porkypine’s goin’ t’ give our boys some trouble on down the road?” Lawson settled down toward the middle (having foreshadowed everything, she at least had the decency to tell the story), but then the story itself didn’t merit the elaborate scaffolding she had put around it. If your point is that people are complicated, I need the trip to be substantially more rewarding. This trip is scenic, but ultimately unsatisfying, and the destination is well-trafficked.