The Lauras

Sara Taylor Press Reviews

'Sara Taylor's The Lauras just persuaded me even more that Taylor is a writer of real gravitas and potency. It feels, to read her, uncanny - a bit reminiscent of reading early Atwood three decades ago. She's a writer whose talent, a fusion of sure-footed, calm and uncompromising, is both quiet and prodigious.' -- Ali Smith Guardian, 'Best Books of 2016

'Elegiac and beautifully observed... Our sympathies remain with the narrator throughout. Scenes of violence, abuse and ritual humiliation are described in such visceral detail that the injustice of Alex's experience burns on to the page ... Taylor has a great ear for language, with the kind of sentences that make you pause and read a second time ... It is such acute observations of her imaginary world that saw Taylor's debut novel, The Shore longlisted for the Bailey's prize, and it should be no great surprise to find her second novel following in its footsteps ... At the heart of the novel's themes of family, love, loss, and identity - not to mention the power, destruction and redemption within the parent-child relationship - is a meditation on gender: on our determination to define and categorise, and on the need by some to belittle or abuse based on that distinction.' Observer

'A strong voice ... both lyrical and down-to-earth ...Taylor's sense of place is one of her greatest strengths. She writes about versions of America that few outsiders ever see ... There is nothing gratuitous about her writing. All of these places are there because they matter and because being in them changes the characters or reveals their histories ... An extraordinary journey ... There's violence and pain in The Lauras ... The Lauras is a fine achievement, engrossing, original and eloquent, and Taylor has more than fulfilled the promise of The Shore.' -- Helen Dunmore, Guardian

'Sara Taylor's tour-de-force debut, The Shore, was an intriguing set of interlocked short stories, spanning generations and crossing genres ... She more than keeps the promise of The Shore in The Lauras. If there is one significant difference it is that The Shore was fiercely bound to a place, whereas The Lauras is a road trip ricocheting around North America. It is a road trip of both inner space and outer vistas ... Alex does not identify as either sex, nor gender. If you re-read this review at this point you will see how I avoided using a pronoun that might indicate a specificity that Alex renounces. The book does this brilliantly ... It is exceptionally moving, and the novel it reminded me of most is James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, not in terms of structure or intent or sentences, but in beguiling the reader into identifying with someone they thought they couldn't ... On the way, Alex will be tormented, abused, adored and ignored. Some of these scenes are gut-wrenching; some of them are quietly beautiful. Taylor's prose is remarkable; both intense and expansive, both precise and wonderfully sfumato ... The writing about Alex exploring different wildernesses is astonishing; the pages about Alex masturbating - and let's remember we do not and cannot know what is actually going on - are in a strange way sublime ... A joy.' -- Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

'Sara Taylor is a writer with a strong sense of place ... [The Lauras is] a work that looks to combine the epic sweep of America with an intimate study of a mother and her child ... It is testament to Taylor's taste and restraint that she never uses this unusual point to strain for cheap characterisation - Taylor's affinity for the environment and landscape, so clear from The Shore, is evident again... Indeed the journey Taylor takes us on is often assured, interesting and full of poise.' Sunday Times