Mary Lawson Q&A
‘The years of frustration and rejection slips taught me that the only sensible reason to write is because you love writing’
Mary Lawson has been longlisted for the Booker Prize twice, first in 2006 and again in 2021
She is a Canadian author. Her first novel, Crow Lake (2002), a tense family drama, won the 2003 McKitterick Prize. Her second novel, The Other Side of the Bridge (2006), is the story of two generations of a family who are torn apart by the Second World War. Her third novel, Road Ends (2013), describes the Cartwright family’s unravelling in the aftermath of a tragedy, set against the backdrop of a frozen landscape in the first half of the 20th century.
A Town Called Solace began in my mind with a little girl standing at the window, watching a man carrying four big boxes, one after another, into the living room of the house next door