It's Beginning To Hurt

James Lasdun is probably the closest in recent years this country has come to a genuinely great practitioner of the short story * Guardian *
Elegant, acutely observed and utterly unflinching... Many writers aim to create work that is unsettling, or perhaps even painful - though not, usually, too painful to bear, at least during the actual reading of the tale. Few, however, do it so well as James Lasdun -- John Burnside * The Times *
James Lasdun seems to me to be one of the secret gardens of English writing... when we read him we know what language is for -- James Wood
Highly intelligent, elegantly composed, darkly haunting and greatly moving, few writers could even hope to compare with Lasdun's literary brilliance * Scotsman *
Lasdun is a good poet; his prose here is marked by a fine, thoughtful, humane exactness -- Tom Deveson * Sunday Times *
Dark, exact and bitterly funny collection... sharp, thought-provoking and fiercely readable * Time Out *
The narratives seem opened up to the entire history of fiction... touching...revelatory...devastating -- Mark Kamine * Times Literary Supplement *
These stories have been well made and have been carefully fitted together... undeniably classy -- Sameer Rahim * Daily Telegraph *
A wonderful writer * Irish Independent *
Inhabits his characters with the seemingly effortless sympathy of the gifted realist writer... Deserves all the honours it is able to accrue: a better book of short stories will not be published this year -- Kevin Power * The Irish Times *