James Lasdun

I would never have thought a memoir sold as the harrowing account of a man stalked by a former student could have so much self-important navel-gazing and so many irrelevant digressions. Lasdun comes off as a pretentious, arrogant, entitled jerk, which I can't imagine was his intention. He went through something tough, and I would have been interested to learn about it, but instead I'm wading through whole sections of "unrelated things I thought about on the train." Ugh.

Another complaint: show more it's like a man had to be stalked and a man had to write about it for stalking to be taken seriously, when women are the likeliest victims of stalking, and by far the likeliest victims of violence from it. Lasdun is getting a lot of annoying and cryptic emails. That sucks. She even posted negative book reviews on his novels on Amazon and Goodreads! The horror! But where's the context? There's never a note that other people also experience this or how it can escalate. I'm not asking for a lit review chapter here, but maybe a lit review paragraph so we can understand the scope of the problem? Or does he not realize the problem exists outside of his inbox? show less

Setting this novella during the months leading up to the Trump election, with his history of female maltreatment and loose affiliation with the truth, lends power to its #MeToo story. Its central theme is a search for truth in a time when the truth has become malleable. On the one hand, the unnamed narrator claims that truth is rigid: “The truth might be hard to bring to light, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist, because it did exist: fixed in its moment, unalterable and certainly show more not a matter of ‘belief.’” Nevertheless, he slowly comes to realize that truth can be defined by culture with no faction having the ultimate claim to it. Lasdun’s focus here is on gender differences and he seems to conclude that obtaining the truth of what happened can indeed be elusive.

Much like the time-honored judicial approach to a search for truth, Lasdun gives us two litigants and an “unbiased” judge. Marco Rosedale and Julia Gault have opposing views of a drunken sexual encounter that occurred 40 years earlier during a journalistic assignment in Ulster. Julia is convinced it was rape, while Marco saw it as consensual. The judge in this case is our unnamed narrator. This man not only seems to be a kind and loyal friend to Marco, but also an old friend to Julia, who worked with his mother and was the object of a youthful crush. He is scrupulous in recording the facts but, at least at the outset, seems to side with his friend, Marco. However, when his wife admits that she often had sex “reluctantly” he begins to doubt his own history with pressuring women to have sex.

Lasdun renders his characters as flawed people. He characterizes Rosedale as a self-absorbed man, and somewhat of a Lothario. He had promising career prospects as a younger man but now has settled for less. As a middle-aged TV personality living in Brooklyn with a grown daughter, her same sex partner, and a much younger girlfriend, Marco seems to have settled into a comfortable lifestyle. Julia is portrayed as a sane and credible woman who has fallen on hard times. Julia admits to telling lies to advance her case. She has written a memoir about her career as a television journalist wherein she tells about the rape.

Marco perceives this admission as a threat to his reputation and proceeds to block publication of the manuscript. He surfaces a letter written to him from her boyfriend at the time that suggests Julia may have been in love with Marco. When that tactic fails to deter Julia, Marco discovers a book proposal she once wrote where she praises a Nazi collaborator. Since Julia’s last resort publisher is the wife of a Holocaust survivor, the book deal inevitably falls through.

Lasdun masterfully maintains a riveting and unsettling mood throughout by slowly revealing information that bounces back and forth between the two versions of the truth. He resists any impulses to take a moral stand, leaving the readers to examine the evidence for themselves. It would not be surprising that readers may differ on who is at fault here. Certainly, such an outcome is realistic. show less

I don’t read many true crime books but this one caught my eye since it occurred in an area of South Carolina that I’m familiar with plus I wanted to learn more about what would cause a seemingly happy family man to kill his wife and son. The author did a fantastic job with his research and laid the story out in a concise way. He also wrote about some of the inconsistencies that were published in the press and the rumors that were going on while the crime was being solved. Even though show more it’s still difficult to believe that someone could kill their wife and son (Paul), the author does an excellent job of explaining the mindset and problems that drove Alex to commit murder.

The author did extensive research for this book but for me the most important thing that he did was to interview many people who knew Alex – not only the people he worked with but family members and people in town who had known him his entire life. Along with the boat accident, he explained other deaths that may have been associated with the family and how they affected (or why they didn’t affect) the entire family. I have read several books about the murders but this is the first one that gives transcripts from phone calls that Alex made from prison after his conviction. The conversations gave a good look at his state of mind and his lack of remorse because despite the verdict, he always said that there was no way that he would kill his beloved wife and son.

This book is a well-done portrait of Alex Murdaugh and the horrific crimes that he was accused of. The writing is so well done and the research so extensive that it reads like a Southern murder novel. show less

Well, this was just a lot of fun. James Lasdun's newest book is a suspenseful novel that rushes along until it ends at just the right moment (so hard for authors to get this exactly right). The Fall Guy is Matthew, a chef trying to decide what to do with his life. His cousin Charlie has invited him to spend the summer with him and his wife at their vacation home in an affluent area of upstate New York. Matthew and Charlie have a long history together and Matthew also gets along well with show more Charlie's wife, Chloe. Sub-letting his apartment and moving into the guest house is a perfect way to give Matthew a financial break and time to think over what he wants to do with his life. The peaceful summer he'd pictured is altered when Matthew begins to suspect that Chloe is having an affair and his curiosity and concern begins to take an ominous turn, even as Charlie and Chloe seem to be losing their affection for him.

Told from only Matthew's point of view, The Fall Guy has an anxious and claustrophobic feel to it. The reader begins to suspect that how Matthew sees things may not be the way the others affected see things and the inability to step away from Matthew's brain adds to the tension as it becomes clearer and clearer that things are going very badly wrong.

James Lasdun may be known for his more literary work, but he knows how to craft a fast-paced and entertaining novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. show less