It’s impossible not to feel some sympathy with Lasdun’s plight, but I feel John Colapinto had it exactly right in the New Yorker when he wrote that Lasdun as “narrator is considerably limited when it comes to understanding his own drives, emotions, and even actions.” In a different book, this could have imbued the text with a driving mystery—Did he ask for it? Why would anyone behave the way Nasreen does if he did not? (Lasdun is so priggish in places, it’s impossible not to feel him a liar when he claims Nasreen’s obsession and her fury were born from nowhere). But outside of the sympathy one feels for him (and discordant discomfort at letting oneself indulge in a bit of unsubstantiated victim blaming), the book fails to engage on any of the more interesting emotional levels it might.
The only real fascination this book had for me is as a piece of defining narrative. Whatever really happened here has been rendered utterly irrelevant by Lasdun’s book. There can be no other narrative. For better or worse, this is now what happened, making this work an interesting artifact, perhaps, but not a better book for it.
Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked— James Lasdun