The Relationship Between Kate and Daniel in Crow Lake

The relationship between Kate and Daniel in Crow Lake

The grief comes from lost love must be recovered by love. In crow lake, the author Mary Lawson portrays a young successful scholar, 26-year-old Kate Morrison, always is bothered by her anguished past. The innermost struggle not only leads she can't directly face the problem existing between her and her older brother Matt for years but also becomes an obstacle of the further relationship with Daniel, the men she loves. But all the problems are concealed elaborately before the invitation letter received. While the peaceful life is broken by the invitation coming from Matt's son, her nephew Simon, Kate suddenly has to face all the problems she doesn't want to face before. How does Kate to resolve these problems? Which direction the relationship between Kate and Daniel goes to?

In the novel, adult Kate seems satisfied with her life as being a professor in university. Her unbelievable passion and hard-working with her work lead her success in her profession field, this hard-working also is a means to distract her from looking backward her grievous past. However, Simon's 18th birthday party is so real that Kate can't escape anymore. She has to decide to what she should do, introducing Daniel to her family or not.

Daniel loves Kate in a natural way. He asks for a truer Kate, the person who is far from just a girl grown up in a little isolated community. His "little request" is "tell me the story of your life."(37) This is acceptable for the lovers who want to look forward a formal relationship.

However, Kate fells stressful and uncomfortable to face the reality that her real life is. She always protects herself from being injured again by escaping from the memory. But she does not realize the difficulty actually comes from her efforts to protect Matt, by not talking about him with anyone. All of her life, however, has been linked with Matt so closely.

By looking back her sorrowful childhood, her older brother Matt comes back to Kate's memory. He was almost child Kate's god because he is not only the person who little Kate relies on after losing their parents accidently but also the spiritual guide for her. However, she is so disappointed for Matt when Matt decides to give up his opportunity to go to university. The deep disappointment cannot recover for years. It makes a big gap between Kate and Matt who are inconceivable close in Kate's childhood. Nobody can taste the regret except Kate because she knows how intelligent Matt is, and nobody can understand Kate's guilt to Matt since she is considered as an achiever of her family's education dream. In fact, in Kate's mind, gifted Matt should be the person to fulfill this dream. He should be more successful than Kate if he doesn't make that "stupid" decision, giving up going to university but marrying