Lauren B. Davis
Список книг автора Lauren B. DavisThe Stubborn Season
Where does one person end and the other begin? That's the question that haunts Irene, a girl growing up in Toronto during the Great Depression. Living with her father, a pharmacist who finds comfort in the bottle, and her mother, a woman teetering on the edge of her own depression, Irene's crumbling family situation mirrors the economic and social turmoil just beyond the front door of their respectable, working class neighborhood home. As she grows into a young woman, Irene finds herself consumed by her mother's increasingly erratic moods and isolated in a world where unemployment, poverty and bigotry have taken firm root. Yet in the midst of lives that seem lost, Irene finds strength in the unlikely form of David, a young man from the Jewish farming community of Sonnenfeld, Saskatchewan, who is fighting his own battle for dignity, hope and a place in the world.
An Unrehearsed Desire
The fourteen stories in this dazzling collection continue acclaimed author Lauren B. Davis' exploration into her characters' psychological landscapes, and ensure her reputation as a writer of razor-sharp intellect and deep compassion. Weaving these stories together is the notion that what one wants and what one needs is not always the same thing: a tale of a heart-broken father coming to terms with the drug-overdose death of his son; a child who must choose between the safety of her mother's controlling over-indulgence and the wider, more dangerous world; a young girl outsmarting a pedophile during what she calls "the summer of naked men;" to a brilliant but socially awkward woman who deals with betrayal by taking on the persona of a bear… Davis hits the nail on the head each and every time.
The Radiant City
In Paris, the so-called radiant city, Matthew Bowles, freelance journalist, suffers a dark time. Holed up in a bare apartment in the 8th arrondissement, he's recuperating physically, though not emotionally, from injuries sustained in a shooting in Hebron. His memory of the event is murky, and although the media has deemed him a hero – he may or may not have tried to save a man and his child – Matthew is repulsed by the attention. Unable to work, Matthew reluctantly agrees to write a book "about what got you shot" for which a New York literary agent promises "six figures on spec." This is the project he tries to get on with in those times when he's free from depression, free from the panic attacks triggered by certain sounds or crowd situations. More often than not, Matthew is mired in the memories of other war zones – Beirut, Herzegovina, Rwanda, Iraq – where he has worked as a war correspondent. There's a "sack of skulls" he carries around with him. Surfacing, as well, are memories of his rural Nova Scotia childhood: a barn on fire, horses trapped. Recollections of his mother – a woman who held on until Matthew got away from home – explain, perhaps, Matthew's tender regard for Sadia Ferhat, a Lebanese woman who, with her father and brother, runs a restaurant in Matthew's district. Doing what he can to save Sadia's son, who is teetering on a life of drugs and crime, Matthew's life intersects in surprising ways with former colleague Jack Sadler, photo-journalist and ex-mercenary, now living in Paris and also recovering from war trauma. Jack's presence in Paris is, at first, a comfort. Tough, burly, and resilient, Jack knows how to deal with panic: "'there's part of the brain that always lives in the present tense of the trauma .... doesn't realize that whatever shit happened to you isn't still happening .... convince your lizard brain that time's moved on.'" The intersection of these three lives is Davis's story in The Radiant City, a novel that, like Dante's Inferno, spirals downward. The Paris underground – literally and metaphorically – teems with betrayal. The authorial compassion of this book is, however, radiant.
Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives
An astonishing variety of voices–male, female, young old–narrate the 20 diverse stories in this, Lauren B. Davis's first collection, though which alcohol flows like an unholy river of destruction and despair. In locales such as Halifax, Spain and rural Ontario, thanks to Davis's clear focus this sharp, exploratory mix goes beyond the margins of kitchen sink realism. Recognized as the work of an important new writer, this is where Lauren B. Davis's career began. The Globe and Mail called it audacious and extraordinary – an amalgam of deep intuitive perception, sly wit and candor that could strip paint.