A Town Called Solace: ‘Will break your heart’ Graham Norton

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New York Times best-selling author Mary Lawson, acclaimed for digging into the “wilderness of the human heart”, is back after almost a decade with a fresh and timely novel that is different in subject but just as emotional and atmospheric as her beloved earlier work. In nonfiction, I was impressed by Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality(Oneworld), a scholarly, compassionate and courageous examination of a subject that’s sparked an unhelpful civil war within the LGBTQ community. But in this poignant novel, rightfully recognised by the Booker judges, the steadfastness of children brings solace to lost grown-ups. Through them she reminds us that old-fashioned storytelling is the best kind and the hardest to do, and that simple themes often touch us most. Clara doesn’t know this yet, but Liam remembers what it was like to be that child and he is the one adult who doesn’t lie to her.

I’m betting you’d enjoy Crow Lake in particular because it’s a coming-of-age story with a strong sense of place (and it’s watery, but near-north Ontario, so not the kind of watery that you’re inhabiting (which is more water-starved now, I suppose *sigh*).It also manages to be a page turner as the reader races to find the connection between Mrs Orchard and Liam. We learn quickly that Mrs Orchard and her husband acted as surrogate parents to Liam when he was four but that something happened under their stewardship that led to the boy and his family moving away.

Lawson’s portrait of Clara — her innocence, agency and coping mechanisms — is charming but also superbly detailed: Clara’s authenticity jumps from the page. How absolutely gratifying to see a mind at work like Srinivisan’s, handling the profane and the erudite with equal clear, unflinching diamond prose.

Even minor characters – from Liam’s tough, touchy wife Fiona to Mrs Orchard’s wilful cat Moses – seem to have lives beyond the page. I’ve heard so much about this novel after it became longlisted, but it seems like the reactions are very mixed with some saying it’s a nice read, but doesn’t have enough depth. I sometimes suspect that I was actually found abandoned in a tree, adopted and raised as a family secret. This book showed the good and the bad in people and that friendship can blossom between the most unlikely people.

It’s totally possible to read it without acknowledging the depth, but when you become aware of it while reading, it suddenly became that much more exciting a read.I love how Katie Kitamura can channel a mind and in Intimacies (Vintage) it is the mind of an unnamed interpreter living in The Hague, interpreting for a former president on trial for war crimes. The more I read, particularly in recent years, the more obvious it seems to me that the fundamental purpose of all fiction is just to help us understand ourselves and the people we love.