Book Review: *It’s Beginning to Hurt* by James Lasdun

• It’s Beginning to Hurt: Stories by James Lasdun
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (July 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0374299026

Back-of-the-book blurb: 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.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review: Do you remember “Romper Room”?  It was a syndicated American children’s show that ended with the hostess (always a hostess, never a host!) looking through her Magic Mirror, ostensibly to the children watching at home, and calling out a list of names of those who had “fun at play” watching that day’s episode.  Author James Lasdun is British, and likely hasn’t seen the show; however, his craft of writing is a magic mirror straight to the psyches and inner demons of his protagonists.

As I read the stories in It’s Beginning to Hurt I was struck by Lasdun’s ability to so skillfully show the way our minds work, the internal conversations we have, playing opposite sides of an argument as we make decisions.  I thought of the caricatures of an angel and a devil on our shoulders, then jumped to Miss Julie’s Magic Mirror on “Romper Room.”  Imagine my surprise when I returned to the jacket flap and read the phrase “recognizably mirrors of our own conflicted selves.”

Indeed, through the characters’ thoughts, as much if not more than their actions, Lasdun exposes their true selves … the self that is not necessarily shown to the world.

In “The Natural Order”, Abel is a happily married man and father to a young child.  He has a comfortable position assisting with his father-in-law’s business of writing travel guides.  On a research trip to Greece, Abel is accompanied by Stewart, a photographer who is quite the proverbial ladies’ man.  Abel sees himself in contrast to Stewart, and examines the way he presents himself to the world, his outward appearance:

It occurred to him that at the very least there were things about the Stewart approach to life that he could adopt without compromising himself.  For one thing, he could sharpen up his appearance.  Being married didn’t mean you had to relinquish all claim to being regarded as a physical animal, but somehow he had managed just that.  His clothes had become shabby, formless, utilitarian.  The luster and contour he had once taken care to maintain had given way, he realized, to an apparent desire to blur himslef into the background of any situation.  he felt a sudden revulsion for the contents of his suitcase:  dust-colored rags of baggy cotton and courduroy; the horrible beige anorak with its webby lining, its pleated elastic waistband, and plastic black toggles.  Forget hors de combat; the thing was more like a body bag!  But he had worn it almost every evening of their trip … Christ!  What had happened to him.

At the end of the story Abel and Stewart have come to “the gorge, an abrupt, sheer, granite-shaded plunge of nothingness.”  Two pages of text pass with Abel’s thoughts, ending in “He stood motionless, looking out into the gulf of empty space.”  The reader is left to decide if this empty space is the gorge or Abel’s future.

This collection has 16 stories, ranging in length from 2 to 26 pages.  The shortest is the title story, “It’s Beginning to Hurt.”  Sparse it’s not; ten years of conflict, secrets and deception are told in those two pages.  We live through the protagonist’s heart and mind – feeling his sorrow at a loss, the respect shown by colleagues and a store clerk, and the scorn and contemptuous words from his wife.  You can download “It’s Beginning to Hurt”, a sample of Lasdun’s short fiction at the BBC Short Story Award site. You’ll see that, while it may be true that actions speak louder than words, the voice inside our heads is often loudest of all.

About the author:  James  Lasdun has published three other short story collections, two novels (including The Horned Man, a New York Times Notable Book), and three volumes of poetry.  He was born in London and now lives in upstate New York with his wife.