It's Beginning to Hurt: Stories

The stories in this remarkable collection--including "An Anxious Man," winner of the National Short Story Prize (UK)--are vibrant and gripping. James Lasdun's great gift is his unfailing psychological instinct for the vertiginous moments when the essence of a life discloses itself. With forensic skill he exposes his characters' hidden desires and fears, drawing back the folds of their familiar self-delusions, their images of themselves, their habits and routines, to reveal their interior lives with brilliant clarity. In sharply evoked settings that range from the wilds of Northern Greece to the beaches of Cape Cod, these intensely dramatic tales chart the metamorphoses of their characters as they fall prey to the full range of human passions. They rise to unexpected heights of decency or stumble into comic or tragic folly. They throw themselves open to lust, longing, and paranoia--always recognizably mirrors of our own conflicted selves. As James Wood has written, "James Lasdun seems to be one of the secret gardens of English writing . . . When we read him we know what language is for again." This collection of haunting, richly humane pieces is further proof of the powers of an enormously inventive writer.

About the Author :
James Lasdun was born in London and now lives in upstate New York. He has published two previous collections of stories, three books of poetry, and two novels, including "The ""Horned Man," which was a "New York Times "Notable Book. His story "The Siege" was the basis for the Bernardo Bertolucci film "Besieged."

Review :
"Lasdun's novels succeed as efficient entertainments, narrowly focused, linguistically dextrous, coolly presenting their characters' foibles . . . His short stories relinquish none of this gamesmanship, yet they seem to expand where the novels contract . . . Their characters have a complexity and confusion that override the unfolding plot. And the narratives seem opened up to the entire history of ?ction . . . Touching and revelatory . . . Devastating." --Mark Kamine, "The Times Literary Supplement" "Reading Lasdun is like reading a sly collaboration between Kafka and Updike: elegant, acutely observed and utterly unflinching . . . This is a collection that examines the most inward mechanisms of rage, fear and desire with astonishing skill and strangely lyric power." --John Burnside, "The Times "(London) "Lasdun has a Nabokovian eye. Few exponents of the short form offer such tempting, disturbing pleasures . . . "It's Beginning to Hurt "is . . . a superlative collection, exhibiting all of Lasdun's familiar talents and a few new ones into the bargain." --Richard T. Kelly, "Financial Times" "A gem . . . James Lasdun writes the best sort of English prose." --Colin Greenland, "The Guardian" "A story master." --Tim Adams, "The Observer "(London) "[Lasdun] create[s] a world of objects and feelings that are rich, recognisable and yet elusive . . . His prose [here] is marked by a ?ne, thoughtful, humane exactness . . . Lasdun uses his dramatic skill to show the most subtle and delicate movements between poles of feeling." --Tom Deveson, "The Sunday Times "(London) "[A] marvelous, masterful collection." --Lizzie Skurnick, "Los Angeles"" Times" "Like such masters of dark literature as Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, Lasdun limns the deep cracks in the soul even as his tales are enlivened by his gift for insight and ear for language. His stories are a fury of elements: skilled dramatic monologues; sketches of fraught emotional states . . . [which] are shot thr “Lasdun’s novels succeed as efficient entertainments, narrowly focused, linguistically dextrous, coolly presenting their characters’ foibles . . . His short stories relinquish none of this gamesmanship, yet they seem to expand where the novels contract . . . Their characters have a complexity and confusion that override the unfolding plot. And the narratives seem opened up to the entire history of ?ction . . . Touching and revelatory . . . Devastating.” —Mark Kamine, "The Times Literary Supplement" “Reading Lasdun is like reading a sly collaboration between Kafka and Updike: elegant, acutely observed and utterly unflinching . . . This is a collection that examines the most inward mechanisms of rage, fear and desire with astonishing skill and strangely lyric power.” —John Burnside, "The Times "(London) “Lasdun has a Nabokovian eye. Few exponents of the short form offer such tempting, disturbing pleasures . . . "It’s Begi