This is the epitome of comfort fiction. We follow three characters in a sleepy town in Northern Ontario town whose lives overlap casually, but who go on to have major impacts on one another. Elizabeth Orchard is an elderly woman who needs to go to the hospital for what she thinks will be a brief period. While she's away, she entrusts school-aged Clara to feed the housecat, Moses, a ritual that the young girl comes to cherish since her teenage older sister has run away, plunging her house into crisis. So little Clara is alarmed when a random man comes to stay at Mrs. Orchard's house. His name is Liam and he has a history with Mrs. Orchard, but one that is slowly revealed to the reader over the course of this book. Her popular but volatile sixteen year old sister has run-way from home after one of a series of rows with their mother – and has not been heard from for several weeks You want something that puts down a slightly fresh marker’: judge Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

At the end of her life, Elizabeth Orchard is also thinking about a crime, one committed thirty years previously that had tragic consequences for two families, and in particular for one small child. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies. The story is told by 3 people. Clara is a little 7-year-old girl whose older sister has run away. Mrs. Orchard is the neighbour next door who has asked Clara to mind her cat while she goes to the hospital. Liam is the stranger who shows up while Mrs. Orchard is away and makes himself at home in her home.

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.”— Graham Norton, bestselling author of Holding and A Keeper The story is told from three-character points of view. Clara, 7 years old, is a dutiful cat sitter who begins the story staring out her front window, watching her neighbor, Mrs. Orchard’s, home. Clara’s teenage sister Rose has just ran away, and Clara feels that she needs to keep her vigilance of the neighbor’s home to assure Rose’s safe return. Clara is the needed innocent in the story, providing some humor through her earnest antics. She takes watching Mrs. Orchard’s home very seriously. Other minor characters add to the amusement, although quiet amusement. Lawson deftly adds those moments to what could have been a fully maudlin and tragic story. My heart broke many times for both Liam and Elizabeth. Clara provided hope. I listened to the audiobook, which also has 3 different narrators who did an amazing job. This was the first audiobook that I did not feel the need to increase the speed.

The books world has long complained about the Booker’s decision to open its doors to American authors. This year, five British authors make the longlist, alongside four Americans. Ishiguro and the British-Canadian Cusk’s novels are joined by fellow Britons Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual, which imagines a future for five children killed in the blitz, Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room, which weaves together the story of a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab with that of a young man in 1999, and British-Somali author Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men, in which suspicion falls on Mahmood Mattan for the murder of a shopkeeper in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay in 1952. I have spent half my life trying to suppress that memory. When I was in St. Thomas’s, the psychiatrist, Dr. Leander, said that whenever it or something similarly disturbing came into my mind I was to replace it, calmly but firmly, with something positive. He said we were all able to control our thoughts to some extent. At first I didn’t believe him, I didn’t see how it could be possible to simply push side such anguish, but actually, with practice, it was. Some of the time, at least”. Mary Lawson gives a lesson in how to craft a story told from three perspectives that also jumps between timelines - when such a grifted and controlled writer does it, it feels completely effortless. Set in a small town North Ontario in 1972, we first meet seven-year-old Clara whose elder sister has run away; then there's her elderly, frail neighbour Mrs Orchard, who is currently in the hospital; and the last perspective is that of Liam, an accountant in his thirties who lived next to Mrs Orchard when he was a small boy. Of course, they all are connected - but the question how exactly is what drives the narrative, so I won't spoil it. Suffice to say that all characters are drawn with great empathy, their trials and tribulations are portrayed in a convincing and touching manner (especially when it comes to Clara who struggles with the world of the grown-ups around her). All storylines center on love, loss, and longing.Lawson, Mary (16 February 2021). "Mary Lawson: Why I write about the Canadian Shield". Macleans . Retrieved 22 August 2021. The story is gentle and quiet with moments of tension and also humour. I have not previously read a book by this author but I enjoyed her writing style very much and plan to look out for more of her work. All of her characters are delightful especially Liam and Clare who do eventually meet and develop a lovely relationship. I loved reading A Town Called Solace ... It's 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. The book opens in the third person voice of a introverted seven year old girl Clare, with what seems to be increasingly autistic tendencies exacerbated by the tension she is facing making her something of an outsider at school

Lawson’s books area 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.”— The Times (UK) Mary Lawson's novel A Town Called Solace is a mystery about hope and redemption in Northern Ontario A Town Called Solace, like her other books, is about family relationships. And even though it doesn’t delve into themes I’d call “Shakespearean” because of their complexity and universal truths—themes of her earlier books, Crow Lake, Road Ends, and The Other Side of the Bridge—it is no less affecting. My first five star book of the year, if I could it would get more. I will definitely read more of Mary Lawson's books, never having heard of her before now. Thank you Tina for bringing this one to my attention, your glowing review encouraged me to find it on ebook from my local library.The best science fiction fires our imagination at the same time as making us look inward. Here are the must-read sci-fi classics novels.