Customer Reviews

The Horned Man

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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

Lawrence Miller, college professor, recently separated from his wife Carol, member of the Sexual Harrassment Committee, is an intelligent and thoughtful man, a man who is seeing a psychoanalyst, controlled, polite, not given to extremes of behavior; not that is, until the events described in this book, and the ensuing disintegration of his quiet and controlled life.

The story can be taken in many ways. Is Miller really at the focal point of a malign conspiracy? Or is he slowly going psychotic? The author circles around his characters and situations, peeling away layer after layer, revealing unsuspected depths of misery. Miller is more than a college professor going through a bad patch; he is a strangely oblivious man, a man who misunderstands social cues in a radical and frightening way, a man who seems oblivious to the wreckage he creates in those who try to relate to him. But is he more than this, maybe even a killer? Well, let the reader decide.

Author James Lasdun is a master of surrealistic prose, written in a disarmingly lucid and simple way. You think he is telling a simple story, then you find yourself confused, perplexed and horrified. What is really going on? The writing is beautiful, laden with symbolism and poetic nuance. The book is not for everyone but I found it well done and well worth reading.

I had high hopes for this novel when I first saw it, then read about it - from the inside flap: `(the book) opens with a man losing his place in a book, then deepens into a dark and terrifying tale of a man losing his place in the world'. Already, I'm thinking `Kafka' - and my premonition was dead-on. Not only are there many allusions to Kafka's writings in this novel, there are direct references to the Master. One of his stories is mentioned, as well as a play based upon it (`Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor'). The play especially figures in the novel's plot in a large way - and there are many Kafka-esque twists and turns throughout the book.

My problem is this is not with Lasdun admiring and emulating Kafka to a degree. In Kafka's works, the reader comes to expect these twists and turns - they are not always gentle one, sometimes leaving the reader with the feeling that he or she has been jerked off-path in whatever direction Kafka wishes to lead us. In the case of Lasdun's novel, I was left with the distinct feeling that I had been manipulated - and in several cases, I could see the twists coming a mile away, `with the headlights on' as they say. I found this `telegraphing' of the plot twists to be increasingly overt as the novel wore on. It left the work with an air of derivation, of the work of a poseur attempting to dress it up as being more intellectual than it really is. I don't mean this to come across as too heavy-handed a criticism - Lasdun is a talented writer, I just think he needs to come up with a method of plot development that is a bit smoother, one that doesn't `try so hard'.

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 is a professor of Gender Studies at a small New York college. Except for his recent separation from his wife life seemed fairly normal for professor Miller. Then the book mark in his book seems to have moved from one place to another. A coin vanishes from his office and he mistakes another woman for his therapist. Strange things happen in this novel, and the reader is never sure whether the tale is fixed in an objective reality or rather the subjective reality of Dr. Miller. Someone seems to be inhabiting his office at night. Certainly the pile of excrement found on his desk one day would seem to indicate that. Did his new woman friend have an accident on a trip or was she murdered in her home? Why did Miller steal his neighbor's glass eye? And what is the relevance of a strange key that pops up in his campus mail box?

Told in the first person the story is indeed puzzling, and the increased information provided as the story develops simply increases our head scratching perplexity. Is our narrator the rather reserved man that he appears to be our is he a dangerous schizophrenic? Order degenerates into disorder. Can we expect a tidy resolution from such confusion? Well, that is the big question.

Author Lasdun keeps the reader in several layers of suspense, in this rather surreal novel. Don't let my terms of "surreal", "disorder" and "subjective reality" scare you away. This is an accessible novel that uniquely explores the mind of its narrator.

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.

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.

The use of language and imagery is top-notch in this novel, which comes as no surprise, as Lasdun is also an excellent poet. This Lasdun novel reminds me of the works of Paul Auster - it's sharply written and has weird/wacky plot points that wake you up from the trance of the wonderful prose - but unlike the best works of Auster, this book doesn't have much heart. There's no doubt it's a smart work, but I just could never feel much of anything for the main character.

Still, it's an interesting work. It did lose me a little as the novel got progressively stranger, but the first 3/4 is pretty mysterious stuff and worth checking out.

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.

This book is a piece of literature masquerading as a thriller. The mystery surrounds Lawrence Miller and his connections to the disappearance of several women to whom he finds himself connected throughout the novel. To say that this is what the book is about would be to shortchange Lasdun's efforts here. The greater theme underlying the book is ambiguity and perception.

All in all, if you're looking for a satisfying whodunnit where the villain unveils his scheme in the penultimate scene, then move right along. This book isn't for you. However, if you appreciate smart writing and character studies and the duplicity of perception, then chances are you'll appreciate this book.