Wissenswertes

Andere Namen: Cargill, Lauren (birth name)
Geburtstag: 1955-09-05
Geschlecht: female
Nationalität: Canada (birth)
Geburtsort: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Wohnorte: Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Annecy, France
Paris, France
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, Canada
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Ausbildung: Indiana University
Humber College (Creative Writing Mentor Program ∙ Toronto)
Berufe: mentor (Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts Correspondence Program)
writer-in-residence (Trinity Church ∙ Princeton ∙ New Jersey)
editor (past European Editor ∙ Literary Review of Canada )
teacher (SHARPENING THE QUILL)
Beziehungen: Davis, Ron (husband)
Cargill, Norma (adopted mother)
Cargill, Alexander (adopted father)
Seguin, Bill (birth father)
Busch, Catherine (birth mother)
Organisationen: PEN Canada
PEN America
The Writers' Union of Canada
Preise und Auszeichnungen: Robert Adams Lecture Series pick, CBC LiteraryAwards shortlist, two mid-career WRiter Sustaining grants - Canadian Council for the Arts, Finalist - Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize
Relit Award Longlist (2009)
Globe & Mail "Very Best BookS of the Year List 2011 " OUR DAILY BREAD
Boston Globe "Best Books of the Year List 2011" OUR DAILY BREAD
Longlisted for the ScotiaBank Giller Award for OUR DAILY BREAD 2012
Agent: Kim Witherspoon (Inkwell Management)
Kurzbiographie: Lauren B. Davis's new novel, "The Empty Room" will be published by Harper Collins Canada in May, 2013. Her most recent work is the critically acclaimed novel "Our Daily Bread," which was longlisted for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize and named one of the "Very Best Books of the Year" by the Boston Globe and The Globe & Mail.

She is also the author of the bestselling and highly praised novels "The Radiant City," (HarperCollins Canada 2005) a finalist for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize; and "The Stubborn Season" (Harper Collins Canada, 2002), chosen for the Robert Adams Lecture Series; as well as two collections short stories, An Unrehearsed Desire (Exile Editions, 2008) and Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives (Mosaic Press, 2000). Her short fiction has also been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and she is the recipient of two Mid-Career Writer Sustaining grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts - 2000 and 2006. Lauren leads the Sharpening the Quill Writer's Workshops in Princeton, is a past mentor with the Humber College School for Writers, Toronto, and past Writer-in-Residence at Trinity Church, Princeton. For more information, please visit her website at: www.laurenbdavis.com

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

The Empty Room von Lauren B Davis

I guess I'm in the minority for not loving this book, but it was just 300 pages of trainwreck. Lots of flashbacks. The narrative was compelling, and I read this very quickly, but it was just rough all around.

Gekennzeichnet

lemontwist | 6 weitere Rezensionen | Apr 9, 2022 |

Even So von Lauren B. Davis

I read this book very quickly, by shoving other obligations out of the way. It is beautifully written, at times painfully honest, and exhilarating in its ability to go where we are reluctant to go and bring us through overjoyed at having been there.

My hat is off to you, Lauren B. Davis. I now I want to read all of your books.

Gekennzeichnet

thesmellofbooks | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 15, 2022 |

Even So von Lauren B. Davis

The uniquely challenging (and fascinating) recent novels of Lauren B. Davis inhabit a blasted moral landscape of human weakness and depravity. In Our Daily Bread and The Empty Room, she fearlessly chronicles the myriad ways in which people damage themselves and hurt one another as they go about satisfying cravings and fleeing responsibilities. The world of these novels is a contemporary one filled with temptation. However, Davis is first and foremost a storyteller, primarily concerned with immersing her reader in an engaging drama. She is not interested in preaching or moralizing. Even So is another example of her consummate art. Chic, attractive forty-something Angela Morrison lives a pampered life in affluent Princeton, New Jersey. Married to Philip, a successful financier many years older than her, Angela is comfortable but bored. It is a dangerous sort of boredom that afflicts Angela, the kind that breeds bitterness and frustration. Fed up with her husband’s priggishness, Angela wants to feel young again. Her craving is for romance and adventure. But Angela also has a good heart: she loves her son Connor (who is just about to start university), and volunteers at Our Daily Bread Food Pantry in nearby Trenton, a town that long ago lost its industrial base and where poverty and homelessness are rampant. The Pantry is run by Sister Eileen. Sister Eileen is suffering from a crisis of faith: deeply troubled by God’s silence and tormented by guilt over an unforgivable act from her youth. Sister Eileen does not like Angela—she thinks the woman is spoiled and irresponsible—but her disapproval serves no purpose: she must, for the good of the Pantry and to remain true to her faith, view Angela through the rosy glow of God’s love. When an opportunity arises to turn the vacant lot next to the Pantry into a community garden, Eileen asks Angela to oversee the project along with Carsten, a professional landscaper. It turns out Carsten is exactly what Angela is looking for—unattached, attractive, attentive, with a mysterious air of foreignness—and a playful flirtation quickly blossoms into a full-blown affair. When Carsten gives her keys to his house, Angela begins to imagine their future together. Angela Morrison’s downfall, when it comes, is nobody’s fault but her own: the result of overblown, unjustified expectations and wilful blindness. But when her reckless behaviour turns tragic, she seeks an unlikely saviour in Sister Eileen. It is not unusual for Lauren Davis to take risks in her fiction—to place weak and reprehensible characters front and centre. In Even So, she has written a novel about a profoundly selfish woman who acts to satisfy her own desires with little regard for consequences or the pain she causes others. When those desires are thwarted, she becomes petulant and self-destructive. But Davis knows what she’s doing. The story she tells is suspenseful and moving, characters and setting are vividly drawn with precise attention to detail, the psychology of the novel is persuasive, her prose sparkles. The novel’s lesson is embedded in the drama and arises naturally from the action. Despite her main character’s deceitful nature and personal failures, we are drawn into a compulsively readable narrative that is impossible to put down.

Readers may not like Angela Morrison, but Lauren Davis ensures they will be captivated by her story.… (mehr)

Gekennzeichnet

icolford | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Sep 27, 2021 |

Even So von Lauren B. Davis

Diese Rezension wurde vom Autor verfasst.

I hope the reader will forgive me for giving my own novel five stars, but if we don't praise our own children, they will wobble out into the world all scarred and ragged.

So... Thank you for reading EVEN SO, a novel in which I explore the challenges of loving difficult people, and love’s role in redemption.

I’ve met a few people over the years who are able to love unconditionally. One of them is a Catholic nun. A few years ago, when I was in a grim emotional landscape, someone suggested I talk not to a psychologist but to a Spiritual Director named Sister Rita. Luckily, she didn’t care whether I was Catholic or not; she cared only about being a companion in a horrid time, and helping me find whatever invitation to a freer, deeper life beckoned from the pain. And she did just that.

At the same time, a number of people I knew were making life-altering decisions. Some for the better, some not so much. Some actually seemed hell-bent in throwing a grenade into the trenches of their lives, oblivious to the fact other people lived in those trenches, too.

Plus, I’ve been concerned over the years about how the gulf between the privileged and the marginalized grows ever wider, and there is very little understanding in the vast majority of the privileged for what the materially poor endure.

I began thinking about how it’s relatively easy to love people who’ve been harmed, but what about those who do harm? Questions about forgiveness and redemption, restoration and transformation, obsessed me. So, I began to write, and developed the characters: a woman of privilege who, in her quest for gratification, is careless of others; and a nun who suffers the silence of God even as she runs a food pantry. Through their relationship with each other, worlds collide, as do other things, and in the end it’s true we all, even nuns, need forgiveness and love.

Again, many thanks for reading. I hope you find something useful here.… (mehr)