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A review by wynne_ronareads
Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun
5.0
Is it awkward to say that I'm obsessed with James Lasdun's writing when he's written prolifically about his own experiences (real and fictional) with obsession?
Who cares? I'm obsessed.
I was given a galley of this novel through work and found it to be as smart and layered as all of Lasdun's fiction typically is.
This story follows a nameless narrator, a white, aging English academic whose a new empty nester along with with his wife, Caitlin. He's casual friends with Marcus, a former journalist and TV personality of sorts, his career steadily waning despite being the son of a wealthy English lawyer. Their friendship becomes more intense after Marcus confides to the narrator that he's been accused of rape by a former colleague he had slept with years ago. He had thought the encounter was consensual, and scrabbles to keep the situation under control while the woman's accusations become louder and more damning.
Lasdun's great skill (one of them anyway) is creating unreliable narrators who aren't inebriated in anyway. So many writers make their narrators unreliable through mental illness or substance abuse, but Lasdun recognizes that we are all made unreliable simply by the force of our emotions and perceptions. Did Marcus misread his youthful relationships? Is she just a struggling woman whose career misfortune makes accusing Marcus now a profitable endeavor? Who has the power? Who benefits from pain? All these questions are floating up in the air, painted next to the backdrop of the 2016 election, made even more sinister because we know the outcome of that debacle.
The tension heightens, the blamelessness of our narrator becomes murky. No one is good, no one is bad, everyone is just human, flawed in their own natural ways. Lasdun's text is as it usually is, rich with literary references and nuances lost on all but adults. Is that weird to say that he writes specifically for adults? Maybe, but it seems true. Younger people are capable of reading anything they want, but there is something distinctly adult about Lasdun's work, that I feel would only grow clearer the more life experience I accumulate.
This book is entirely about #MeToo, but it isn't pop culture-y in any way. It's studied and tense and encapsulates all the grey areas of those issues in a way that will still leave you stunned. Bummed, no doubt, but stunned.
Who cares? I'm obsessed.
I was given a galley of this novel through work and found it to be as smart and layered as all of Lasdun's fiction typically is.
This story follows a nameless narrator, a white, aging English academic whose a new empty nester along with with his wife, Caitlin. He's casual friends with Marcus, a former journalist and TV personality of sorts, his career steadily waning despite being the son of a wealthy English lawyer. Their friendship becomes more intense after Marcus confides to the narrator that he's been accused of rape by a former colleague he had slept with years ago. He had thought the encounter was consensual, and scrabbles to keep the situation under control while the woman's accusations become louder and more damning.
Lasdun's great skill (one of them anyway) is creating unreliable narrators who aren't inebriated in anyway. So many writers make their narrators unreliable through mental illness or substance abuse, but Lasdun recognizes that we are all made unreliable simply by the force of our emotions and perceptions. Did Marcus misread his youthful relationships? Is she just a struggling woman whose career misfortune makes accusing Marcus now a profitable endeavor? Who has the power? Who benefits from pain? All these questions are floating up in the air, painted next to the backdrop of the 2016 election, made even more sinister because we know the outcome of that debacle.
The tension heightens, the blamelessness of our narrator becomes murky. No one is good, no one is bad, everyone is just human, flawed in their own natural ways. Lasdun's text is as it usually is, rich with literary references and nuances lost on all but adults. Is that weird to say that he writes specifically for adults? Maybe, but it seems true. Younger people are capable of reading anything they want, but there is something distinctly adult about Lasdun's work, that I feel would only grow clearer the more life experience I accumulate.
This book is entirely about #MeToo, but it isn't pop culture-y in any way. It's studied and tense and encapsulates all the grey areas of those issues in a way that will still leave you stunned. Bummed, no doubt, but stunned.