ABSTRACT
In Crow Lake, Mary Lawson’s fictional account of a group of four siblings growing up in a remote community by a Canadian lake, the protagonist reflects on the emotional legacy of her once inseparable and now distant bond with her older brother:
It should have been impossible to leave Matt behind. This crisis I was going through, not to mention the ache which I seemed to have carried around with me for most of my life – of course they were to do with him. How could it be otherwise? Everything I now was, I owed to him. All the years of watching him, learning from him, coming to share his passion – how could I not be affected by the way things had turned out? (2002: 243)
The book evokes a subtle portrait of the intense emotions aroused by sibling relationships including the ambivalence at their heart.
