Rating: 
Summary: What World Are We In?
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: taut psychological thriller
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Surreal Misadventure
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Very odd!
Review: Like one of the other reviewers of this book, I was also "left scratching my head"! I found that I was drawn in at the beginning but as the story wore on I was hoping more and more that the end would provide some clarification as to what exactly the story was about. Not quite the page turner I was expecting and I found by the time I reached the end I was baffled and unsatisfied. I didn't like the story but it was beautifully written.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst Book I've Read In Years
Review: Mr. Lasdun teaches creative writing. Sometimes that old adage, "Those who can, do; Those who cannot, teach." is true. In the case of The Horned Man, as I read the end, I felt sorry for his students. Although the author has a nice command of adjectives, and actually had a fairly original plot, what was his publisher thinking? Please don't spend your next [$$$] on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreamlike story of isolation in the big city
Review: Not a light, breezy reading experience, but definitely worth the little bit of effort and focus it asks of you. Nice balance of clearly-resolved developments and leave-it-up-to-you-what-really-happened material make for an entertaining yet artful experience. A perfect thoughtful winter read.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting, thought-provoking, macabre, funny....
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of time
Review: Oh dear! I am so glad I checked this out at the library rather than buying it~ I was expecting a good serial killer thriller with college prfessors and a great plot; just this artsy weiting, no plot, no grisly murders, no baffled cops, no real story. Too Kafkaesque. I was expecting a good read like Mark Zubro'a Nick Hoffman series. Fine if you like this sort of thing; NOT for me.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Bleakness
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The book is not a "sweet cup of tea"
Review: The book is an amazing and startling creation. It combines the mystery and beauty of the language with the chilling fantasy of the story.
While it starts off slow and half way through the book you are not quite sure if it has started in deed, it keeps you coming back to it every time you get a chance. And then, the moment when the blood stiffening line hits you, you run for the shoe closet to lock the book and never pick it up again, only to open it few moments later and read on. The ending, is as perplexed as the book itself. Leaving you with the thoughts and replays of scenes, trying desperately to make sense and put a logical boundary around it. The book is full of clues, hints, allegories and what you make out of them will ultimately shine a light on the ending and the book itself. This book is by no means for the reader who likes the logical, gravity-grounded explanation of life, nor is it for the reader who is looking for an easy read. For those who decide to take the plunge, prepare to be flipped around and dropped into the "perfect storm" of dark human perplexity.
If I could give 3 advices to the reader, these will be:
1. Never read the book past midnight
2. Don't try to fit it into Newton's laws
3. Don't believe those Bulgarian references, although interesting, they're not completely true.
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