I first encountered James Lasdun’s writing through a review he’d written in The Observer, in praise of Rawi Hage’s The Cockroach. Prompted by the accolades he poured on Hage's novel I ordered it but was Lasdun's own writing which struck me most immediately. A Google search led to a number of other Guardian articles, two novels and a number of poetry and short story volumes. On finding his second full-length novel The Seven Lies in Foyles I started from there.
Though ostensibly it appears to be an international espionage yarn The Seven Lies is a novel which evades categorisation just as its protagonist Stefan Vogel slips guises. Set primarily in the former East Germany and within a climate of communist paranoia this is a tale which disregards the historical grandeur of its setting and instead opts instead to push the mutation of one soul to the fore.
I don't know if many other people discovered James Lasdun as a columnist like I did. But if so they'll probably expecting the lyrical flourishes of the opening section. What may come as a surprise is the discovery that both through the structural elegance and emotional resonance of this narrative Lasdun's real flair is for storytelling itself. In the opening scene a glass of wine is flung in Vogel's face whilst attending a New York cocktail party. This lustrous scene prompts the telling of a life story which traces a spiraling arch through former East Germany, 1980's Manhattan before arriving back at precisely the same wine drenched tableau.
As the prefacing Martin Luther quote pronounces 'One lie most beget seven more lies if it is to resemble the truth.' Plainly this is a logic which animates Stefan's life. His are not wild lies - but almost prosaic responses to the situations which befall him. Of course each of these deceptions comes with a snag. To stage his first fraud - to being a poet protégé at his mothers left-wing saloon he must suffer the sexual molestation of the apartment janitor and plagiarise Whalt Whitman poems from the family trunk. From this first calculated evasion - deception and trickery become his elected tactic for steering clear of life's barriers. Yet he is just as detached from the morality of these deceits as he is from the surreal nature of the incidents which befall him:
"Exactly how I feel about life itself: I realise: that it has come unaccountably into my possession, somewhat to its own dismay."
The sense of fraternal alienation felt by the Stefan inspire the most vivid, almost autistic series of meditations on nature - the 'intangible pathos' of autumn leaves and the leaf dappled sunlight hitting forest lakes in upstate New York.
This dislocation also yields an amplified subtlety and depth in the portrayal of the other characters in the story. Principally Stefan's mother who nurtures a superiority complex of her families past and tirelessly contrives to invert every misfortune into an artful affirmation of self. This is also reflected in the portrayal of Stephan's wife Inge - who in fretful response to the couples new life in America is compelled to go on charity missions – assisting the poor and crippled of New York City. Eventually she resigns herself to simply cutting stories of homicide and corruption from the newspapers and pasting them into scrap books – as if this simple ritual would counterweigh the cruelty of American life. The novel ends in simple adulation of her, as though cheating the society and following the most demeaning paths were all worthwhile means for securing her devotion.
