It's Beginning To Hurt

The Story

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 ofCape 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. James Lasdun 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. He was born in London and now lives in upstate New York.The Atlantic Montly Best Books of 2009The Wall Street Journal Best Fiction of 2009Library Journal Best Books of 2009Favorite Fiction of 2009 from Los Angeles TimesJames Lasdun's great fit is his instinct for the vertiginous moments when the essence of a life discloses itself. In sharply evoked settings that range from the wilds of northern Greece to the beaches of Cape Code, these intensely dramatic tales chart the metamorphoses of their characters as they fall prey to the range of human passions. As James Wood has written, 'James Lasdun seems to me to be one of the secret gardens of English writing . . . When we read him we know what language is for.' 'Every story is heart-poundingly vivid. Mr. Lasdun's characters live in the here and now . . . He instinctively understands human psychology, and it seems as though he can turn anything into a story.'—The Wall Street Journal'This exquisite collection of short stories illuminates teh everyday agonies of the mind, its anxieties, obsessions, doubts, and yearnings . . . Lasdun pins each observation to the page with gracee and exactitude.'—Benjamin Schwarz, The Alantic Monthly'Spellbinding . . . James Lasdun may single-handedly save British short fiction from an untimely demise.'—Taylor Antrim, The Daily Beast'If you listen, you can almost hear it ticking: the time bomb of anxiety, or delayed gratification, or fear, or deflceted love, in any one of the artfully told stories in James Lasdun's latest collection, It's Beginning to Hurt . . . [These are] intimate, sometimes wryly comforting tales of tenderness and rue.'—O, The Oprah Magazine'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; postmortems of choked lives and numbed hopes; and the literary equivalent of stares at the ruin left by a violent storm.'—The Miami Hearld“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 fiction . . . Touching and revelatory . . . Devastating.”—Mark Kamine, The Times Literary Supplement (London)“Reading Lasdun is like reading a sly collaboration between Kafka and Updi