A photo of Mary Lawson, author of A Town Called Solace, side-by-side with the interview title, 21 Questions, on a blue and grayscale background.

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Interviews

‘J.D. Salinger changed my life’: 21 Questions with Mary Lawson

Mary Lawson's books stacked against a pink background with a flower to the right

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Reading lists

Where to start reading Mary Lawson

Crow Lake

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF A TOWN CALLED SOLACE

After their parents die, the Morrison siblings try to stay together – but one brother’s sacrifice changes them all. 
 
Kate Morrison has spent years away from Crow Lake, the small northern Ontario farming community where her childhood changed in an instant. After her parents died in an accident, she and her siblings clung to one another while trying to remain a family. 
 
Her brilliant brother Matt once seemed destined for a life far beyond the farm. Kate escaped through education and the natural world, but she could not escape the story she had built around Matt’s sacrifice or the neighbouring Pye family’s violence and secrets. Returning home as an adult, she must look again at what she believed she knew. 
 
Crow Lake is a restrained and deeply affecting novel about siblings, rural life, grief, ambition and the cost of survival. 
 
'I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each one of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler 
 
'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 
 
'Full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity...a compelling and serious page-turner' Observer

Beautifully written, carefully balanced, Mary Lawson constructs a history of sacrifice, emotional isolation and family love without sounding a false note

Full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity...a compelling and serious page-turner

Lawson's evocative storytelling...knows just how to draw the reader on...this is a novel of disappointed hopes and self-delusion, but it has a feel-good finish. Move over Lake Wobegon

A novel of a darkly unpredictable and compelling kind. It is a wise book

'I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each one of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler 
 
Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt's protégé, 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. 
 
'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, author of Chocolat 
 
'Full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity...a compelling and serious page-turner' Observer

The Other Side of the Bridge

Discover the author Graham Norton praised for her ‘poised, elegant prose, paired with quiet drama that will break your heart.’

**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE** 
 
In a small town in Northern Ontario, Arthur and his brother Jake are divided by temperament, ambition and their shared love for the same woman. 
 
Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart. Arthur is shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is handsome and reckless, and dangerous to know. 
 
When Laura arrives in their community, tensions are pushed to the edge of tragedy... 
 
Spanning the 1930s to the post-war years, The Other Side of the Bridge explores love, betrayal and the enduring weight of memory within a tightly bound rural community. 
 
'An enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate' Guardian 
 
'Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town' The Times

Like the great 19th-century novelists of provincial life, Mary Lawson is fluent in the desperate intensity of the small, individual dramas of respectable people - and she paints an eloquent picture

Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town

This is a fine book - an enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate

A subtly-wrought affair of complex relationships, hard times and shocking events

Eloquent, thoughtful book...not only has Lawson fulfilled the promise of her first novel, she has surpassed it in a layered, complex story about emotional power shifts. Storytelling, not showmanship, dictates the honest, serious art of Mary Lawson

Lawson's measured prose is good at communicating the warp and weft of communal life... Lawson's quiet artistry has many virtues

Beautifully observed with characters who are all realistically flawed

Lawson's gifts are enormous, especially her ability to write a literary work in a popular style. Her dialogue has perfect pitch, yet I've never read anyone better at articulating silence. Best of all, Lawson creates the most quotable images in Canadian literature

I could not put it down, but perhaps better to say that I could not let it go or that it would not let me go... Lawson transported me into a place that I know does not exist by taking me deep down into the story of a family whose fate is inexorable and universal. Her reality became mine

[Lawson] returns to several of the themes that marked her brilliantly successful first novel, Crow Lake... Lawson's cornucopia of novelistic gifts, even more bounteously on display in her second book, includes handsome, satisfying sentences, vivid descriptions of physical work and landscape and an almost fiendish efficiency in building the feeling that something very bad is about to happen

An engrossing period piece...vivid evocation of setting and characters

Tragic and haunting - get the Kleenex for the final page

Mary Lawson’s first novel, Crow Lake, was loved by critics and readers all over the world; it was translated into 26 languages and published in 29 countries. It was a New York Times bestseller, won the McKitterick Prize and spent 75 weeks on the bestseller lists in her native Canada. Her second novel, The Other Side of the Bridge, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and selected for the Richard &amp; Judy Book Club. Road Ends, published in 2014, was described by the New York Times as ‘tender and surprising . . . a vivid and evocative tale’. A Town Called Solace was an instant bestseller in Canada and longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. Mary came to England in the 1960s, and lives in Kingston-upon-Thames.

**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE** 
 
A powerful, heart-breaking story about tempting fate and living with the consequences 
 
Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart. 
 
Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know. 
 
When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe... 
 
'An enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate' Guardian 
 
'Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town' The Times

Road Ends

Tender and surprising… A vivid and evocative tale

Subtle but gripping... Beautifully written, with the locations brilliantly evoked

Road Ends is beautifully written, evocative and tender. It will haunt you long after you’ve finished it and leave you impatient for more

Austere, humane and accomplished, Road Ends depicts a wilderness of the heart through which some roads pass

Every bit as good as I expected. A heart-aching and beautifully written story of a family falling apart

A beautiful novel, with the psychological twists and turns of each character gently and poignantly unfurled

Lawson grasps the anguished allure of family life played out against the vast, wintry backdrop of the Canadian landscape. Deftly she keeps our interest by dividing up the chapters between the characters to give shifting points of view on some universal themes

Road Ends is a captivating novel and a joy to read

Discover this powerful novel about a family falling apart, from the Booker Longlisted author of A TOWN CALLED SOLACE 
 
'Tender and surprising... A vivid and evocative tale' New York Times 
 
Twenty-one-year-old Megan Cartwright has never been outside the small town she was born in but one winter's day in 1966 she leaves everything behind and sets out for London. Ahead of her is a glittering new life, just waiting for her to claim it. 
 
But left behind, her family begins to unravel. Disturbing letters from home begin to arrive and torn between her independence and family ties, Megan must make an impossible choice. 
 
'Every bit as good as I expected. A heart-aching and beautifully written story of a family falling apart' Woman and Home

A Town Called Solace

Set in the frozen north of Canada in 1972, this is a novel about childhood trauma, painful histories that need reckoning with and the moments in life when we can change for the better

As a seven-year-old girl watches for her missing sister, a stranger moves in next door and a neighbour’s old secret starts to resurface… 
 
In Solace, Northern Ontario, seven-year-old Clara waits at the window for her missing sister Rose. 
Next door, Mrs Orchard’s house stands empty, Until stranger Liam Kane arrives to claim the home she has left him in her will. 
 
Clara sees Liam as an intruder. Liam, newly divorced and unemployed, has no idea why Mrs Orchard chose him. 
In hospital, Elizabeth Orchard looks back over the decades, to the child she once loved and the mistake that shaped two families. As the truth about Rose begins to emerge, all three of them must decide how much of the past can be repaired. 
 
Longlisted for the Booker Prize, A Town Called Solace is a tender, quietly suspenseful literary novel about a missing girl, small-town secrets, found family and the chance to change before it is too late. 
 
'I've been telling everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler 
'Close to perfection' The Times 
'Exquisitely poignant' Liane Moriarty 
‘Will break your heart’ Graham Norton

It's already one of my favourite books of the year

She has the God-given ability to convey the complexities of human nature in everyday language... Like a magician, Lawson hides her technique, and makes it all seem as natural as breathing

A contemplative story about loss and regret, a slow burn of a read with a fire at its heart

Lawson's writing is such that it appears effortless but, as all the strands come together to create a rich and satisfying tapestry, her genius for storytelling becomes apparent

The doubts, difficulties and uncertainties of the human condition are carefully examined in a way that is both heartbreaking and joyful

Subtle and darkly funny, this tender novel unspools the interconnected lives of her beautifully drawn characters

Lawson has carved out a world in Northern Ontario that's vividly, absorbingly real... Carries you along from midnight to dawn, oblivious of the time

A Town Called Solace keeps you breathless with anxiety, then relief and finally even joy

Beautifully written and so finely crafted; told in the kind of prose I most admire because it takes what appears to be complicated and makes it clear . . . These interwoven stories of three people at different stages of life, and yet each struggling with their own form of loss and grief, will stay with me the way good friendships stay with you. It's already one of my favourite books of the year

Mary Lawson writes with a pure simplicity... she has the God-given ability to convey the complexities of human nature in everyday language... It was only on a second reading that I came to realise quite how intricately plotted A Town Called Solace is: like a magician, Lawson hides her technique, and makes it all seem as natural as breathing... she possesses an instinctive feel for when to withhold information, and when to release it

Lawson's books are a pleasure to read - they conjure a space where quiet reflection and owning your past mistakes bring gentle rewards; they feel kind and wise and brimful of empathy

This is Mary Lawson's fourth novel and I'd recommend a binge immersion... Lawson has carved out a world in Northern Ontario that's vividly, absorbingly real; she captures tones and voices with exactitude in writing that's idiomatic but never flashy and carries you along from midnight to dawn, oblivious of the time.

Poised, elegant prose, paired with quiet drama that will break your heart. The sort of book that seems as if it has always existed because of its timeless perfection

You can't get much farther north than the Ontario of Mary Lawson's icy, compelling stories of calamity and redemption. A Town Called Solace keeps you breathless with anxiety, then relief and finally even joy

Lawson's writing is clear and emotive... In this poignant novel, rightfully recognised by the Booker judges, the steadfastness of children brings solace to lost grown-ups

There's a beauty and simplicity in her [Lawson's] stories set in small-town Canada

Anne Tyler is a big fan of this Canadian author and so am I

A lovely, gentle novel with edge, worthy of Anne Tyler

Lawson's writing is such that it appears effortless but, as all the strands come together to create a rich and satisfying tapestry, her genius for storytelling becomes apparent.

Completely absorbing... A Town Called Solace pleases at every level. It's a captivating tale suffused with wisdom and compassion

[In A Town Called Solace] doubts, difficulties and uncertainties of the human condition are examined carefully in a way that is both heartbreaking and joyful

Subtle and darkly funny, this tender novel unspools the interconnected lives of her beautifully drawn characters, as they grapple with grief and loss, while steadfastly hoping for a change of happiness in the face of life's uncertainties

[Lawson] writes an unpretentious prose that zings with metaphorical vim and humour

Mary Lawson

I don’t know how she does it. I was so emotionally invested in these characters from the very first page. Mary Lawson has the rare ability to find extraordinary beauty and warmth in the most unexpected places. She's one of my all-time favourite writers... utterly captivating

A beauty of a book... A vivid, gracious, quietly suspenseful and life-affirming novel about the complications of kindness, small-town thinking and an old man’s discovery of new life just when he least expects it. I kept turning the pages, desperate to know how it would end. And oh! A dog to fall completely in love with.

A wonderful book, written with a clear-eyed compassion and a fine eye for detail. A masterpiece of insight into what it means to be fully flawed and perfectly human. I loved it

An out-and-out masterpiece; I was completely hooked after two pages

'She's one of my all-time favourite writers... utterly captivating' GRAHAM NORTON 
'A beauty of a book... I kept turning the pages, desperate to know how it would end' RACHEL JOYCE 
'A masterpiece of insight into what it means to be fully flawed and perfectly human. I loved it' JOANNE HARRIS 
 
Winter in the small Canadian town of Solace is a season of hibernation. But this year, the snowfall brings a series of accidental encounters that will shake up the lives – and loves – of an old man, a student on the run and an abandoned dog 
 
It is deep winter, 1969. As the Vietnam War drives young men north across the Canadian border, widower Jack’s quiet life is overturned by two accidents that happen on the bend in the road into town. First comes a dog in a bad way. Next a draft-dodger, seriously injured, lying in the snow. Suddenly, Jack’s cabin is busy with a growing cast of characters – and all the baggage, dreams and desires they’re carrying. 
 
But the atmosphere chills when Jack’s daughter Sally drops by one day and doesn’t like what she sees... 
 
This exquisite snow globe of a novel is a refuge, a story of connection and moral complexity set in the beloved world of Mary Lawson’s bestselling, prizewinning Crow Lake, The Other Side of the Bridge, Road Ends and A Town Called Solace.

Mary Lawson

Praise for Solace in Winter

I don’t know how she does it. I was so emotionally invested in these characters from the very first page. Mary Lawson has the rare ability to find extraordinary beauty and warmth in the most unexpected places.

A beauty of a book... A vivid, gracious, quietly suspenseful and life-affirming novel about the complications of kindness, small-town thinking and an old man’s discovery of new life just when he least expects ...

A wonderful book, written with a clear-eyed compassion and a fine eye for detail. A masterpiece of insight into what it means to be fully flawed and perfectly human. I loved it

I don’t know how she does it. I was so emotionally invested in these characters from the very first page. Mary Lawson has the rare ability to find extraordinary beauty and warmth in the most unexpected places.

A beauty of a book... A vivid, gracious, quietly suspenseful and life-affirming novel about the complications of kindness, small-town thinking and an old man’s discovery of new life just when he least expects ...

A wonderful book, written with a clear-eyed compassion and a fine eye for detail. A masterpiece of insight into what it means to be fully flawed and perfectly human. I loved it

I don’t know how she does it. I was so emotionally invested in these characters from the very first page. Mary Lawson has the rare ability to find extraordinary beauty and warmth in the most unexpected places.

A beauty of a book... A vivid, gracious, quietly suspenseful and life-affirming novel about the complications of kindness, small-town thinking and an old man’s discovery of new life just when he least expects ...

A wonderful book, written with a clear-eyed compassion and a fine eye for detail. A masterpiece of insight into what it means to be fully flawed and perfectly human. I loved it

Books by Mary Lawson

Articles featuring Mary Lawson

‘J.D. Salinger changed my life’: 21 Questions with Mary Lawson

Where to start reading Mary Lawson

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