The villagers of Marton cum Grafton, North Yorkshire, have turned their disused red telephone box into a miniature library/book exchange. This is one of two books I brought away with me when I investigated it for the first time yesterday. It's fascinating, well-stocked and well worth a visit!
Link to BBC news video
I recognised the title, Crow Lake, although I couldn't remember why, whether good or bad, but decided to give it a go anyway!

Amazon Editorial Review: "Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing–a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.
"Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural “badlands” of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur–offstage.
"Centerstage are the Morrisons, whose tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt’s protegee, her 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 state of her own emotional life. And she thinks she’s outgrown her siblings–Luke, Matt, and Bo–who were once her entire world.
"In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harbored and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control, continually overturning one’s expectations right to the very end. Tragic, funny, unforgettable, Crow Lake is a quiet tour de force that will catapult Mary Lawson to the forefront of fiction writers today."

This copy was originally given away with the magazine Woman and Home and is marked Not For Resale.

I hadn't expected this novel to be anything like as gripping as it proved. I read it on a long train journey and the miles just flew by without my noticing, I couldn't put it down. From the first page to the last, I felt totally involved in the lives of this fascinating family and their neighbours in the rural wilds of northern Canada as seen through the eyes of the daughter who escaped to the city to become an academic.

Left by the door while waiting for the train to Harrogate!