TRL Coffee Table – Darcie Wadelius, TRL Co-Race Director

TRL: What was the last book you read?
DW: The last book I read was Crow Lake by Mary Lawson.

TRL: Why did you pick it?
DW: I chose this book as I just happened to be perusing the book sale cart at the Millennium Library on my lunch break when it caught my eye. It had been nominated as book of the year by a number of media outlets and as a Winnipegger, I couldn’t pass up a bestseller for $1.50!

The book is set in the heart of Canadian Shield in northern Ontario and focuses on the Morrison family who is deeply impacted by a tragedy. The story is told from the perspective of Kate who was a child at the time and follows her into adulthood. She struggles to make sense of her memories about how her family coped after the incident and how she ended up becoming estranged from her siblings over time. Fortunately, a family celebration brings them together offering the chance for reconciliation and understanding. The story is beautifully written in an understated manner and her descriptions of the physical landscape felt like home to me.

TRL: What do you love most about Canadian authors and books?
DW: I have a soft spot for Canadian literature as I think that there are many talented authors in our fine country. Maybe their stories resonate with me because I have lived here all of my life but I think that works of fiction can also help us identify what it means to be Canadian. This is even more significant now as we talk about reconciliation on a national level and hopefully move in the right direction. So in honour of Canada’s 150th, I think I need to discover another Canadian author! Anyone have suggestions for me?

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in People of TRL

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: