Victory

Reviews / Votes

The word "masterpiece" is not one to throw around lightly but I was enthralled by James Lasdun's novella Afternoon of a Faun, from his collection Victory... it has the psychological precision of a Chekhov story. * Evening Standard *Books of the Year* * Two superb novellas full of contemporary resonance... extraordinarily taut and compelling. * Spectator * [Victory makes] a convincing case for James Lasdun as one of the most incisive investigators of the human heart writing in English today... an instant masterpiece. * Observer * The novellas [in Victory] are united by Lasdun's signature virtues: a forensic attention to psychological detail, a mastery of dialogue and an all-round fluency that gives his prose a compelling swiftness. It is these virtues, more than the plots, that make Victory a triumph. * Literary Review * Timely and irresistibly unpleasant... sure to provoke passionate discussion... [Afternoon of a Faun] lingers after you have closed the book with a vividness that testifies to the compact virtues of the novella. * Guardian * [James Lasdun's] electric new book... is absorbing... [it] constantly pulls the rug from under your feet. * Daily Mail * Afternoon of a Faun is a brilliantly imagined, devastatingly insightful and powerfully rendered novel of sexual exploitation and betrayal. Like all of James Lasdun's work, it is meticulously written and intelligent, both a novel of ideas and a cautionary tale for the #MeToo era. Its ending is bitterly ironic, or perhaps just darkly funny, depending upon one's perspective - and Afternoon of a Faun is about the very drama of "perspective". In an era of sexual reckonings and "defunct male prerogatives", any decades-old fling is a ticking time bomb an ambivalent ex can choose to detonate at whim. Yet who's to say what actually happened? Afternoon of a Faun is an exquisitely rendered tale of moral arithmetic, erotic murkiness, and men's fascination with other men's scorecards. It's also Lasdun at his most pleasurably diabolical. [Victory] comprises two mesmeric... impressive stories, containing beautiful descriptions and subtle twists. * Sunday Times, *Best Literary Novels of 2019* * Darkly humorous and compelling portraits of men wrestling with guilt and desire... [Afternoon of a Faun] feels very much a novel for our times. * Guardian *