Lansens, Lori

views updated

Lansens, Lori

PERSONAL:

Born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada; married; chidren: one.

ADDRESSES:

Home—CA. Agent—Bukowski Agency, 14 Prince Arthur Ave., Ste. 202, Toronto, Ontario M5R 1A9, Canada; fax: 416-963-9978.

CAREER:

Writer. Producer of films, including He Ain't Heavy, 1990, Tessa, 1992, Jimmy's Coming, 1992, The Night I Was Wed, 1994, and Under My Skin, 1995. Director of films, including Tessa, 1992, and The Night I Was Wed, 1994.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

He Ain't Heavy, 1990.

South of Wawa, 1991.

Jimmy's Coming, 1992.

The Night I Was Wed, 1994.

Under My Skin, 1995.

Marine Life, 2000.

Wolf Girl (also titled Blood Moon), 2001.

NOVELS

Rush Home Road, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

The Girls, Alfred A. Knopf Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

ADAPTATIONS:

The Girls has been recorded as an audiobook by Time Warner Audiobooks, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lori Lansens established herself as a screenwriter before publishing her first novel, Rush Home Road. This historical drama is set in the author's native region, southern Ontario. During the days of slavery in the United States, this area was populated by many runaway slaves who escaped by means of the Underground Railroad. Lansens's book focuses on Sharla Cody, a five-year-old girl, and Addy Shadd, her seventy-year-old neighbor in the trailer park where they live, in a town that was first settled by fugitive slaves. When Sharla's mother deserts her, the girl is raised by Addy, who was also deserted in childhood. The story flashes forward and back throughout Addy's life, and her deterioration is gradually revealed throughout the narrative. Rush Home Road is "a poignant novel about the power of love and forgiveness," stated Vanessa Bush in Booklist. Another reviewer, Maria Stanborough, stated in Herizons:"Lansens manages to compress the magnitude of an epic into one woman's life. In doing so, she reveals the possibility for epic in all our lives."

The Girls, Lansens's second novel, is also set in southern Ontario. The title characters are Rose and Ruby Darlen, twin sisters who are conjoined at the head. Lansens has stated that the story was inspired by the real-life Iranian sisters, Ladan and Laleh Bijani, who had lived conjoined at the head for twenty-nine years before insisting on surgery to separate them. The two girls both died shortly after the surgery due to massive loss of blood. In The Girls, although they are physically linked, Rose and Ruby Darlen have very different personalities and abilities, and they express a great deal of independence. Rose is stronger, more direct, but at times more perceptive than Ruby, who is poetic and fragile. Ruby is anxious to have their life story set down in both their voices, and it is at her urging that they each record their own memoir. The result is "extraordinarily moving: joyous, heartbreaking, and shot through with moments of dark humor as we follow the girls through childhood and adolescence, with its attendant mishaps, and into maturity and self-awareness," stated Eve MacSweeney in Vogue. Natasha Tripney, a reviewer for the New Statesman, called it "an immensely readable novel, compelling and convincing. The Girls is an enchanting blend of the extraordinary and the everyday."

Discussing The Girls in an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Lansens commented on the unique perspective of those living in southern Ontario: "You don't really feel Canadian. You watch American television and root for American teams. When I moved to Toronto, it felt like I had finally moved to Canada. So for me, the setting resonated with Rose and Ruby's experience. Two sister countries, alike but not, dependent on one another. Even the way Rose and Ruby are joined, at the side of the head—they have a panoramic view, but they are never looking at the same thing at the same time. To me, that feels a lot like the relationship between Canada and the U.S."