Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2013 September 25 • Wednesday

James Lasdun's latest book, Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, is most probably going to be the best book I read in 2013. I admired Lasdun's two novels and have enjoyed the occasional poem or piece from him in the Times Literary Supplement. As good as all that was, it didn't prepare me for the brilliance of this memoir.

A former writing student flirts with Lasdun, is rebuffed and becomes obsessed with destroying him. Describing herself as engaged in "verbal terrorism" she send him thirty emails a day, attacking, accusing, cajoling, demanding. When he stops responding she begins to target his friends, colleagues and, perhaps most ominously for a freelance writer like Lasdun, his employers.

Horror is most effective when related dispassionately and balanced with humor. Lasdun does this excellently while conducting intricate analyses of the situation and the characters involved. He appears to be completely honest, looking within himself for whatever might be his own responsibility and not that of a deranged mind.

Most impressive of all, however, is the magic trick he pulls off at the end of the book, presenting a different perspective on his trials, transforming it into something profound, spiritual and transcendent, something related to the essence of humanity.

By all means check it out. The first line is "A young man on a journey comes across a corpse at the edge of a village".