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The Fall Guy: Lasdun James

The Fall Guy: Lasdun James

by JamesLasdun (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2017

    $3.29
Synopsis

A Guardian Book of the Year It is summer, 2012. Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their idyllic mountain-top house. As the days grow hotter, the friendship between the three begins to reveal its fault lines, and with the arrival of a fourth character, the household finds itself suddenly in the grip of uncontrollable passions. Who is the real victim here? Who is the perpetrator? And who, ultimately, is the fall guy? A story of fracture in paradise, where ancient resentments and current desires lurch violently to the surface and an idyllic summer retreat becomes a stage for lies, lust and revenge, The Fall Guy is Lasdun's most entertaining novel yet: a taut psychological thriller that is superbly written, darkly vivid, with an unforgettably febrile atmosphere of erotic danger.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 272
 Edition: 01
 Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 12 Jan 2017
ISBN 10: 1910702838
ISBN 13: 9781910702833
Book Overview: A Guardian Book of the Year 'Engaging, effortlessly readable... Lasdun?s writing style is clean and straightforward. All the complexity resides in character and detail. This is masterfully controlled 2am noir.' - Lionel Shriver Financial Times

Media Reviews
Engaging, effortlessly readable... Lasdun's writing style is clean and straightforward. All the complexity resides in character and detail. This is masterfully controlled 2am noir. -- Lionel Shriver * Financial Times *
With its deftly constructed narratives of guilt and buried resentment, The Fall Guy is more accessible than Lasdun's previous novels... watching Matthew, Charlie and Chloe lure one another into a trap not quite of their own making has a certain shivery fascination...you think of Highsmith or Hitchcock. -- M. Harrison * Guardian *
Nothing is straightforward in this slick, Highsmithian thriller, and while the damaged Matthew's capacity for self-deception is flagged early, Lasdun's skill lies not least in letting us think that we might therefore have his number. Wrong - and yet the novel's denouement feels fated even as it smoothly steals the breath. -- Stephanie Cross * Observer *
Impossible to put down. * Daily Mail *
Exceptionally entertaining...The Fall Guy reads like early Ian McEwan or late Patricia Highsmith... Lasdun is masterly in his story's construction... This is exactly what a literary thriller should be: intelligent, careful, swift, unsettling. * New York Times Book Review *
Already drawing comparisons to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train - but more aptly described as the literary descendant of Dostoyevsky and Patricia Highsmith in an alluring contemporary setting - The Fall Guy is a twisty, chilly, exquisitely written, and tautly suspenseful exploration of big ideas in the guise of a psychological thriller. * Boston Globe *
James Lasdun seems to be one of the secret gardens of English writing...when we read him we know what language is for ... In sentence after sentence, the reader feels Lasdun's words shaping and then freely donating a world to us, with great flexible artistry. -- James Wood
The early pages crackle with a gut-level sense of menace... [There is] a brilliantly unbearable pivotal scene... The artistry in this morally complex, coolly seductive portrait of an imploding psyche means that there is plenty to admire on a repeat visit. -- Anthony Cummins * Literary Review, 2017 Books of the Year *
James Lasdun has written an elegantly suspenseful novel set in a brilliantly realised affluent upstate New York community not unlike Woodstock - his characters are achingly real, and the self-deceptions that drive them so insightfully depicted, we might almost mistake them for our own. Truly a page-turner - propelled toward just the right ending. -- Joyce Carol Oates
What a sinister and searching novel this is - and what a delight. James Lasdun is one of our great writers. -- Joseph O'Neill
In The Fall Guy, James Lasdun brings the signature gifts to contemporary noir that he's displayed in other literary venues - wit, style, an attractive gravitas. And the tale itself is sharp, acute in its observations, and absorbing. It's a rich read. -- Norman Rush
Elegant and disturbing...This simple-seeming novel, so graceful in its unfolding, proves dense with psychological detail and sly social observations. * Wall Street Journal *
Lasdun serves up another complex psychological thriller. . . A gripping, often unnerving page-turner perfect for fans of Thomas H. Cook, Ian McEwan, and Joyce Carol Oates. * Booklist *
Lasdun's controlled, devious storytelling style infuses every tick of the clock with tension. * Kirkus Reviews *
[A] terrific novel... Lasdun presents the inexorable turnings of fate in a subtle and disconcerting way. * Publishers Weekly *
Author Bio
James Lasdun's books include The Horned Man and Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University and reviews regularly for the Guardian. His work has been filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged) and he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard.