Books and Brunch with Lauren B.Davis and Thea Lim

Author photo sources: Penguin Random House Canada. Other photos by Girl Well Read—do not use without written permission.

Blue Heron Books hosted "Books & Brunch" featuring Giller Prize nominee, Thea Lim, and Lauren B. Davis. The ladies gave a reading and were asked about their inspirations and themes of their latest works. A question and answer period, as well as a book signing, followed.

Lim's work, An Ocean of Minutes is a dystopian time-travel story about migration and displacement. A fatal virus has infected a number of Americans and there is a cure that has been invented in the future. If loved ones agree to time travel (forward), the state will fund the treatment for those left behind. She says that as humans, we are time bound. In this novel, time travel is forward only, yet so much of the book is about recouping the past. Lim based her visa system on the US visa system, more specifically the O-1visa.

Polly makes a plan to meet up with Frank, her love, at an agreed upon spot at a specific time in the future. Photos won't survive time travel, so Polly takes Frank's baseball cards—they appear to be practical in that they hold some value, but to Polly, they are more personally valuable.

How did she decide which pop culture references to include? 

Everything resets after 1981. Lim liked the Dionne Warwick lyrics "A fool will lose tomorrow reaching back for yesterday." Also, Mel Gibson was on the rise in the 80s. There is a sense of collective nostalgia with pop culture.

The cost of love, nostalgia, what is the right way to let go?

Lim says that the reader decides.

An Ocean of Minutes

America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend Polly will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means risking everything. She agrees to a radical plan—time travel has been invented in the future to thwart the virus. If she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded labourer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years.

But when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a changed and divided America, with no status and no money, Polly must navigate a new life and find a way to locate Frank, to discover if he is alive, and if their love has endured.

THEA LIM has received multiple awards and fellowships for her work, including artists' grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and she previously served as nonfiction editor at Gulf Coast.

She grew up in Singapore and lives in Toronto, where she is a professor of creative writing.

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Lauren B. Davis' The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a story about addiction and family. It is linked to grammar in that it becomes both a book and a place.

Davis was inspired by The Snow Queen, a fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Set in Toronto, there is an opioid crisis—the city is being ravaged by a drug called Elysium which induces a dream-like state. She uses the fairy tale as a way to bring the audience in. Davis is also no stranger to addiction and was very candid about her own struggles with alcohol. Lauren revealed that she lost two brothers to suicide—both had struggled with alcohol and drug addiction.

Davis incorporates lots of animals in her books. Her tagline for the book is, “The dog doesn’t die!” She is appalled at how many writers kill off dogs.

When did you want to be a writer?

Lauren, without hesitation, said she always wanted to be a writer.

The Grimoire of Kensington Market

The downtown core of Toronto is being consumed by Elysium, a drug that allows its users to slip through the permeable edges of this world and then consumes them utterly. Peddled by the icy Srebrenka, few have managed to escape the drug and its dealer. But Maggie has.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," The Grimoire of Kensington Market is the story of Maggie, guardian of The Grimoire bookstore, which expands and contracts as stories are born . . . or die. Only those who are destined to find The Grimoire enter through its front door. But one day a messenger arrives with a mysterious note that reads, "follow me." The next day, another note arrives and then another. The messages, Maggie realizes, are from her brother, Kyle, who has fallen under the influence of the Elysium. Kyle has gone too far into the Silver World and needs his sister, a recovering addict herself, to rescue him.

Driven by guilt and love in equal measure, Maggie sets off on a quest where bands of robbers stalk the woods, tavern keepers weave clouds to hide mountains and caribou fly on the Northern Lights. A journey where dreams and the dead both come to life.

LAUREN B. DAVIS is a Canadian author. She is best known for her novels Our Daily Bread, which was named one of the best books of 2011 by The Globe and Mail and The Boston Globe and The Empty Room, a semi-autobiographical novel about alcoholism.

She currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband and their dog.