Lauren Owen studied English Literature at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, before completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she received the 2009 Curtis Brown prize for the best fiction dissertation. The Quick is her first novel. She lives in Durham, England. 
The Quick by Lauren Owen
The blurb of Lauren Owen’s debut novel The Quick piqued my interest, with its talk of an unlikely romance, Victorian London’s secret underworld, and a mysterious members-only institution, The Aegolius Club. And its cover, an understated black-and-white photo of a young man reading in a library, spoke to the part of me that loves elegant, emotionally-withdrawn period dramas. Had I known it was another vampire novel, I might have been less excited about picking it up. And that would have been a real shame. While this first novel has some faults, the confidence and skill with which it is pulled off is astounding.
One of the coolest things about The Quick is that it doesn’t scream “vampire novel.” I got swept up in the story before I realized that something strange, perhaps even supernatural, was happening behind the scenes. The V-word is only used two or thr... Read More
