Lauren Berry
Author of Living the Dream
4 Works 64 Members 19 Reviews
Works by Lauren Berry
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- female
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Reviews
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DAGray08 | Jan 1, 2024 | Flagged
whakaora | 17 other reviews | Mar 5, 2023 | This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Being a grownup is hard. When our older two children went off to college, we told them that we didn't expect them to know what they wanted to do with their lives at 18. As the oldest moves into the real world, we still don't expect him to know where his path is. Obviously his first job (yay for a fully employed kid!) is the first step on his path but there's no reason to expect that he knows with any certainty where that path will ultimately lead. Even people who have long had a very good idea of what they want to do (child #2 here) don't know how the path will get them where they want to go. And it's the stops along the way to a goal that shape a person, that make them who they are, and if they're lucky, turn them into adults. Lauren Berry's novel, Living the Dream, entertainingly details the life detour main character Emma has to make as she works toward her ultimate goal of being a writer.
Emma works at an advertising agency where she is quite good at her job as a "creative" but is often unrecognized and certainly underpaid and unfulfilled. What she really wants is to be a writer. From her best friend Clementine's perspective, Emma's life looks pretty good as after a year abroad doing an intensive and well-respected but very expensive graduate program, Clem has had to move back into her mother's house and work as a bartender while she waits impatiently to be discovered as the talented screenwriter she is. Neither Em nor Clem envisioned her adult life looking the way it is and both feel stuck waiting for their dreams to come true.
This is a funny and delightful look at the lives of young women in London figuring themselves and their lives out. Emma is struggling personally and professionally, her one glimmer of professional happiness being in the blog she writes on the side, her outlet for truth. Otherwise she is swamped in the tediousness of office life and in feeling like a sellout helping advertise companies in whom she doesn't believe. Clem doesn't want to sell out to the corporate world but she isn't moving forward any faster than Emma and she's always broke to boot. Both Em and Clem want to find happiness and fulfillment, which they try to do through a lot of boozy nights out, dating disasters, and kvetching to each other and their assorted friends but it takes actual movement and risk for anything to actually change in their lives.
Berry has written a terrifically entertaining novel about launching into adulthood, chasing dreams, and finding yourself. Emma is a complete delight and the cast of secondary characters around her are compelling and real feeling. Clem is billed as a second main character but she really plays second fiddle to Emma in the novel. There is certainly a lot of true to life angst here but the humor balances it out nicely so the reader never feels as if she's wallowing with the characters. As a mother of young adults, this novel does make me sad to think so many newly minted grownups are so unhappy and stuck in their lives, but it also gives me hope that finding the right path will happen, things will look brighter, and not everything along the way will be terrible. This quirky coming of age novel should appeal to others who remember their twenties with a shudder and a sigh of relief that they are through that fraught time and by those living through it who want to see themselves in these fun-loving but scared to make a move reflections of themselves.… (more)
½Emma works at an advertising agency where she is quite good at her job as a "creative" but is often unrecognized and certainly underpaid and unfulfilled. What she really wants is to be a writer. From her best friend Clementine's perspective, Emma's life looks pretty good as after a year abroad doing an intensive and well-respected but very expensive graduate program, Clem has had to move back into her mother's house and work as a bartender while she waits impatiently to be discovered as the talented screenwriter she is. Neither Em nor Clem envisioned her adult life looking the way it is and both feel stuck waiting for their dreams to come true.
This is a funny and delightful look at the lives of young women in London figuring themselves and their lives out. Emma is struggling personally and professionally, her one glimmer of professional happiness being in the blog she writes on the side, her outlet for truth. Otherwise she is swamped in the tediousness of office life and in feeling like a sellout helping advertise companies in whom she doesn't believe. Clem doesn't want to sell out to the corporate world but she isn't moving forward any faster than Emma and she's always broke to boot. Both Em and Clem want to find happiness and fulfillment, which they try to do through a lot of boozy nights out, dating disasters, and kvetching to each other and their assorted friends but it takes actual movement and risk for anything to actually change in their lives.
Berry has written a terrifically entertaining novel about launching into adulthood, chasing dreams, and finding yourself. Emma is a complete delight and the cast of secondary characters around her are compelling and real feeling. Clem is billed as a second main character but she really plays second fiddle to Emma in the novel. There is certainly a lot of true to life angst here but the humor balances it out nicely so the reader never feels as if she's wallowing with the characters. As a mother of young adults, this novel does make me sad to think so many newly minted grownups are so unhappy and stuck in their lives, but it also gives me hope that finding the right path will happen, things will look brighter, and not everything along the way will be terrible. This quirky coming of age novel should appeal to others who remember their twenties with a shudder and a sigh of relief that they are through that fraught time and by those living through it who want to see themselves in these fun-loving but scared to make a move reflections of themselves.… (more)
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whitreidtan | 17 other reviews | Sep 7, 2019 | The premise sounded good but too cutesy for my tastes. This book just did not deliver for me. I never got fully involved in the story line and struggled to finish this one.
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fictionalblonde | 17 other reviews | Apr 10, 2019 | Awards
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- 4
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- #264,968
- Rating
- ½ 3.6
- Reviews
- 19
- ISBNs
- 13
The poet's speaker reveals gut wrenching atrocity and the emotional wreckage in concrete detail, then alternates to stream of consciousness deftly. Most important, without having a personal experience to refer to, it reads honestly which is the highest compliment i can think of for any poetry of witness. Honesty in details that are original and not canned details from self-help books or previous works.
Some of the highlights are not only the speaker's own impressions but the assignment of a personality to the community, who looks past the suffering child in their midst. Lines like this from 'The Sawgrass Women Make Me Nervous' - 'hard to unhinged/my mouth. Especially to a ghost . . 'speak to the barriers in communication after an atrocity where everyone looks past the crime and becomes a vacant look. The stream of consciousness passages of a poem like 'Unto Others. As They Do To You.' provides a heart wrenching look into the girl becoming a woman way too early and an honesty that hits deeper than canned legal definitions, self-help books, or scriptures. 'am I remembering the rule right -/golden-I wrap my legs around it until it starts to -milk and bend-/where are the parents . . .'
I have a feeling this author will make herself heard again in the future. Definitely worth the time, you will want to pick it up for a second and third read.… (more)