Winner of the 2007 Costa Book Award

Literature & Fiction

A.L. Kennedy

Contemporary

Vintage Books USA

Elizabeth Barber is crossing the Atlantic by liner with her perfectly adequate boyfriend, Derek, who might be planning to propose. In fleeing the UK temporarily, Elizabeth may also be in flight from her past and the charismatic Arthur, once her partner. But as the voyage progresses, Elizabeth's past is slowly revealed.

The Blue Book

Vintage

Useful for readers and aspiring writers, this book contains what they need to know about the complexities of researching, writing and publishing fiction. It features essays on character, voice, writers' workshops and writers' health.

On Writing

History & Criticism

Vintage Publications

SERIOUS SWEET

Literary

Vintage Digital

Sex and death - our two greatest preoccupations and bullfighting brings them together. We have always been fascinated by the bull, its violent beauty and innate appeal as a symbol to confront power. And the elaborate choreography of the bullfight also provides us with an opportunity to confront our great obsession - death. To watch a bullfight is an extraordinary act of voyeurism. Beyond the theatre, the costumes and the well-worn plot is the fact that a man faces death while the crowd looks on. And so people are drawn to the arena to witness the ultimate spectator sport. They go to admire gracefulness and agility, to be horrified by the proximity of death; to witness a spectacle - all part of the business of watching an animal die. And that's why we argue abut bullfighting - whether it is a sport, an art form, or simply a type of stylised torture. Definitions abound, but none of them are definitive. A.L. Kennedy explores them all, guiding us through the maelstrom of ideas with all the skill and elegance of matador.

On Bullfighting

Humor & Entertainment

Yellow Jersey Press

The stories collected in Original Bliss are concerned, appropriately, with the complexities of sex and the lack of it. In the long novella that gives the book its title, Helen Brindle thinks she has lost God - but it is simply love that she's missing. She can't find it at home, with the violent, deadly Mr Brindle, but will she find it in Stuttgart when she meets the enigmatic Edward E. Gluck, with his Process and his paraphernalia? And what happens when her father confessor starts to confess? A beautiful and terrifying examination of passion and pornography, of the aching need for completion and healing.

Original Bliss

Jonathan Cape Ltd.

What Becomes

Twice selected for Granta’s list of Best Young British Novelists, winner of the 2007 Costa Book Award for her acclaimed novel Day (“Day is a novel of extraordinary complexity”—The New York Review of Books), which was also chosen as one of New York magazine’s top ten books of the year—the internationally revered A. L. Kennedy returns with a story collection whose glorious wit and vitality make this a not-to-be-missed addition to the canon of one of our most formidable young writers.No one captures the spirit of our times like A. L. Kennedy, with her dark humor, poignant hopefulness, and brilliant evocation of contemporary social and spiritual malaise. In the title story, a man abandons his indifferent wife and wanders into a small-town movie theater where he finds himself just as invisible as he was at home. In the masterfully comic “Saturday Teatime,” a woman trying to relax in a flotation tank is hijacked by memories of her past. In “Whole Family with Young Children Devastated,” a woman, inadvertently drawn into a stranger’s marital dysfunction, meditates on the failings of modern life as seen through late-night television and early-morning walks. Powerful and funny, intimate and profound, the stories in What Becomes are further proof that Kennedy is one of the most dazzling and inventive writers of her generation.

Elizabeth Barber is crossing the Atlantic by liner with her perfectly adequate boyfriend, Derek, who might be planning to propose. In fleeing the UK - temporarily - Elizabeth may also be in flight from her past and the charismatic Arthur, once her partner in what she came to see as a series of crimes. Together they acted as fake mediums, perfecting the arcane skills practised by effective frauds. Elizabeth finally rejected what once seemed an intoxicating game. Arthur continued his search for the right way to do wrong. He now subsidises free closure for the traumatised and dispossessed by preying on the super-rich. The pair still meet occasionally, for weekends of sexual oblivion, but their affection lacerates as much as it consoles. She hadn't, though, expected the other man on the boat. As her voyage progresses, Elizabeth's past is revealed, codes slowly form and break as communication deepens. It's time for her to discover who are the true deceivers and who are the truly deceived. What's more, is the book itself - a fiction which may not always be lying - deceiving the reader? Offering illusions and false trails, magical numbers and redemptive humour, this is a novel about what happens when we are misled and when we are true: an extraordinarily intricate and intimate journey into our minds and hearts undertaken by a writer of great gifts - a maker of wonders.

JONATHAN CAPE.

On Writing. A.L. Kennedy

Reference

Dictionaries & Thesauruses

Serious Sweet: Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by A.L. Kennedy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by A.L. Kennedy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by A.L. Kennedy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Day

The Blue Book

On Writing

SERIOUS SWEET

On Bullfighting

Original Bliss

What Becomes

The Blue Book

On Writing. A.L. Kennedy

Serious Sweet: Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize