The Horned Man

Obviously, those who pick up this book expecting a crime thriller with gruesome murders and baffled cops are going to be disappointed. What James Lasdun offers the reader is a stunning, frightening look inside the mind of a man whose familiar reality is disintegrating around him. Yes, "The Horned Man" is a Kafkaesque (and Nabokovian) study in paranoia and madness; it's also a psychological thriller that has been justly described as a page-turner; but it's also much more than that. Lasdun gives us a keenly satirical commentary on gender politics in contemporary American academia, and on the idea of "engineering the new male" (the title of a symposium where the hero gives a presentation). Through masterful little touches, Lasdun gradually reveals the dark underside of his hero's mild-mannered "sensitive male" persona. To the extent that the book has a "message," it's that attempts to suppress and discard masculinity will only cause it to reassert itself in dark, ugly, twisted, even monstrous forms. Yet this message never feels heavy-handed or forced; rather, it emerges organically from the narrative. Lasdun's beautiful style helps draw the reader into the web of this often chilling story.

T S Eliot said that the mind of the poet was constantly fusing disparate spheres of experience into new wholes. His idea is memorably borne out by James Lasdun's extraordinary book, The Horned Man. In this, his first novel, Lasdun, a well-known poet on both sides of the Atlantic, weaves into a dazzling unity such disparate worlds as the occult sphere of medieval mythology and alchemy; the polluted, overbuilt cosmos of the suburbs stretching out of New York City; and the genteel, soul-destroying prison of middle-class English life. The Horned Man, like a cross between books by Nabokov and Kafka, is about hallucination, obsession, degradation, despair and murder -- but it's written with exquisite calmness and discernment. Its plot is clever and relentless -- but the book's mood is speculative, tender, often comic. The novel's central character is a man possessed; the novel's audience will be people haunted.

Fantastic - I couldn't put it down. It keeps getting stranger and stranger, but it has a dark logic that makes everything believable and compelling. If you like high-anxiety tension/suspense and super-smart writing, this is a must-read.

The Horned Man is an extraordinary creation. Intelligent, surprsing, riveting, with a mastery of language and mood such as I have not encountered in a very long while. Think the intelligence of Henry James, the economy of Raymond Carver, and the storytelling of James M. Cain, and you'll have an idea of how good (and original) this novel is. I found myself re-reading the book the day after I had finished it, an extremely rare occurence. This is because author James Lasdun's tale can be understood in several ways. The Horned Man is a work of literature that is also thrilling to read.

Lawrence Miller left England over seven years ago to come to the United States where he taught gender studies at many different colleges. When he arrived in New York, he met Carol and later married her, tremendously simplifying his obtaining a permanent visa. He and Carol are separated but not a day doesn't go by that he doesn't miss her or hope that they will reconcile. He currently teaches at Arthur Clay College in a Manhattan suburb when he discovers that the previous occupant of his office walked away from this job. When pranks appear, Lawrence thinks that the previous occupant is hiding out in his office. When the capers escalate into something far more dangerous, a determined Lawrence plans to confront his tormentor who he believes is the reason Carol is keeping her distance from him. James Lasdun's debut novel is a powerful tour-de force about a man's ability to twist reality to suit his need to delude himself from the truth. Still the question the reader must ask is the simple paradox that though a person is paranoid, some one still might be out to get him or her. So is some one out to get the paranoid somewhat tormented Lawrence or is the threat to his peace inside his mind? THE HORNED MAN is worth reading for those fans who enjoy a taut psychological thriller similar to the Dustin Hoffman movie Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?Harriet Klausner