Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119426 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

theasylum.wordpress.com:
`James Lasdun is one of those gifted writers who seems to have avoided the attention he deserves....'

The Sunday Times
`Lasdun is a good poet; his prose here is marked by a fine, thoughtful, humane exactness.'

Guardian
'It relaxes you, assuring you you're in good hands, while its sensitivity keeps you alert.'

Customer Reviews

'On the other hand the critical exegesis has only just begun'
`Joseph Nagel slumped forward, head in hands'

The first line of An Anxious Man, the first story in James Lasdun's collection It's Beginning to Hurt, describes the state of angst which investing a sizeable sum in the stock market can induce. This story won Lasdun the first National Short Story Award in 2006 and it is a gem, perfectly describing `how wearying, how humiliating it was to have so little faith in anything, to be so abjectly at the mercy of every tremor of fear in one's mind'.

This is a brilliant collection of short stories; intelligent, enlightening, and well written. I was impressed with Seven Lies, his last novel, which had a brilliant opening. In this collection Lasdun dazzles with his endings. It is also remarkable just how quickly he can conjure up a recognisable world: a man worries about a tumour and his worsening relationship with his sister, another man starts to question his own fidelity whilst wondering at his colleague's promiscuity, a neighbour witnesses a family breakdown. The title story on the end of an affair is just two perfect pages long.

These short stories leave you with lasting visual images - an abundance of blossom on a tree, writhing caterpillars, fine jewellery on a woman's neck as well as great turns of phrase - `Here was Broadway; billboards and scaffolding and more billboards over the scaffolding'. Lasdun is great on titles also - from Totty to The Natural Order to The Incalculable Life Gesture. I've enjoyed everything by Lasdun so far and I'm looking forward to reading the next book as he just gets better.