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The Lauras

Audiobook
Fiction: Literary
Unabridged   8.5 hour(s)
Publication date: 08/01/2017

The Lauras

A Novel

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781681686073
Digital Download ISBN:9781681686080

Summary

Sara Taylor brings the American landscape to vivid life in an unforgettable road novel that strikes at the heart of a mother-child bond.

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Product Description

From the exceptionally gifted, Baileys Prize–nominated author Sara Taylor comes a dazzling new novel about youth, identity, and family secrets.

After a fight with Alex's father, Ma pulls Alex out of bed and onto a pilgrimage of self-discovery through her own enthralling past. Guided by a memory map of places and people from Ma's life before motherhood, the pair travels from Virginia to California, each new destination and character revealing secrets, stories, and unfinished business. As Alex's coming-of-age narrative unfolds across the continent, we meet a cast of riveting and heartwarming characters including brilliant Annie, who seeks the help of Ma and Alex to escape the patriarchal cult in which she was raised, and the tragic young Marisol, whose dreams of becoming a mother end in heartbreak.

Slowly, Alex begins to realizes that the road trip is not a string of arbitrary stops, but a journey whose destination is perhaps Ma's biggest secret of all. Told from the perspective of Alex, a teenager who equates gender identification with unwillingly choosing a side in a war, and written with a stunningly assured lyricism, The Lauras is a fearless study of identity, set against the gorgeously rendered landscape of North America.

Reviews/Praise

"Excellent narration by Rudy Sanda, who packs life and energy into the story of a mother who pulls her son out of the family and his life to embark on a journey of self-discovery on an unusual mother-son road trip." —Donovans Literary Services

The Lauras is a fine achievement, engrossing, original and eloquent, and Taylor has more than fulfilled the promise of The Shore.” —Helen Dunmore, The Guardian

“Exceptionally moving . . . Taylor’s prose is remarkable; both intense and expansive, both precise and wonderfully sfumato. . . . That such a sophisticated book has such a simple message is a joy.” —Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

“Elegiac and beautifully observed. . . . It is such acute observations of her imaginary world that saw Taylor’s debut novel, The Shore, long listed for the Bailey’s prize, and it should be no great surprise to find her second novel following in its footsteps.” —Hannah Beckerman, The Observer

Author Bio

Sara Taylor is a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, working on a double-focus PhD in censorship and fiction. Her short fiction has been published electronically and in print in the Fiddlehead, the Fog Horn, and Granta, among other places. Her first novel, The Shore, was published in 2015.