New Writing 9 brings together some of the most formidable British talent, placing new names alongside more established ones, and offers contributions ranging from poetry to essays, from short stories to previews of novels in progress. Distinctive, innovative and entertaining, it is essential reading for all those interested in British writing today. This volume features new writing from Simon Armitage, Louis de Bernières, John Burnside, Anita Desai, Neil Ferguson, Duncan McLean, Ruth Padel, Tim Parks; Rose Tremain, Alan Warner; and many others.

New Writing 9

Literature & Fiction

KENNEDY,A.L.

Short Stories & Anthologies

RANDOM HOUSE UK

Almost forty and with nothing to show for it, Hannah Luckraft is starting to notice that her lifestyle is not entirely sustainable: her subconscious is turning against her, her soul is a little unwell. Her family is wounded, her friends are odd, her body is not as reliable as it once was and her drinking is frankly out of hand. Robert, a dissolute dentist, appears to offer a love she can understand, but he may only be one more symptom of the problem she must cure. From the north-east of Scotland to Dublin, from London to Montreal, to Budapest and onwards, Hannah travels in search of the ultimate altered state: the one where she can be happy - her paradise. Paradise is a compelling examination of failure that is also a comic triumph, a novel of dark extremes that is full of the most ravishing lyrical beauty.

Paradise

Contemporary

Vintage

Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of violence, anguish and love, A.L. Kennedy examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities. While showing us the unlikeliness of intimacy and the impossibility of communication, Kennedy also reveals the subversive liberation of impotence, the humour of discomfort as human beings chafe together, the crazed claustrophobia of the family adn the wildly funny results of an eccentricity unleashed.

Now That You're Back

Vintage Books

So I Am Glad

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.

Literary

Nathan Staples is a man in pain, consumed by loathing and love in roughly equal measures. Frustrated and appalled by his life and the way he lives it, he is sustained only by his passionate devotion to his estranged wife, Maura, and their teenage daughter, Mary—whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years, and who thinks he’s dead. When Nathan contrives to have Mary invited to the island where he lives in retreat, he sets in motion the possibility of telling her he is her father, and of becoming whole and complete and alive again.The path to grace, though, is strewn with obstacles and challenges. The obsessive island dwellers are trying to cure themselves through trial by extremity while, over in London, Nathan’s editor, only friend and one link with his literary career—the brilliant, loyal, hopeless Jack—is drinking himself into the ground. And Mary is torn emotionally between familial love for the two uncles who brought her up in loco parentis and the beginnings of a romantic, sexual life beyond. With her new novel, A. L. Kennedy has written a work of something approaching genius—its surface bright with turmoil and damage, its depths profound and turbulent. A brilliant examination of human frailty, cut through with bitter, helpless comedy and agonizing grief, Everything You Need is a novel about a man who has nothing, a man who will be healed only when he finds the lost grail he once held in his hands: the ability to give and receive love.

Everything You Need

Original Bliss

Exposing and exploring the undercurrents of violence, anguish and love, the author examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities in this collection of short stories.

The ferociously talented author of Original Bliss and On Bullfighting offers this haunting tale of two forlorn people who find in each other a hope and love as genuine and original as this marvelous book in which they come to life.M. Jennifer Wilson is a mid-thirties radio announcer living in Glasgow. She shares a house with Art and Liz, two typical Scotland thirtysomethings, but her life takes a drastic turn with the arrival of her new housemate, an elusive man who glows in the dark and can't remember his name. He soon reveals himself to be none other than Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, the famed writer and duelist of eighteenth-century France, and what unfolds is a love story stark and surreal, tender and humane.

Everything You Need, the new novel by Scottish writer AL Kennedy, is the story of Nathan Staples, a self-sabotaging, depleted novelist who lives in a writer's colony where he dreams of reunion with his estranged wife, Maura, and his daughter, Mary, who he's not seen for 15 years. Nathan contrives to have Mary, now 19, invited to join the colony where he can mentor her literary progress without telling her who he is. Mary, an independent and open young woman, has been lovingly raised by an extraordinary gay couple and is more than able to withstand Nathan's bullying irascibility and possessive, confused desire. Kennedy brilliantly teases out the dilemmas and dramas of his subterfuge as he attempts to redeem himself. Nathan, Mary and the five other writers are beautifully drawn and their claustrophobic reliance on each other is touching, cruel and true. Kennedy has a delightful ability to stretch words to new effect. The expressive tenderness in her handling of love, loss and recovery is robust, bracing and sometimes quaint. As Nathan teaches Mary how to avoid his mistakes, how to welcome "the anxious flex of ready words", Kennedy is clever to steer clear of the hackneyed dangers of author-prodigy dynamics and swerves into murkier emotional scapes. Despite a baggy middle and an underwriting of Maura, this is a splendid epic tale of the tricky and terrifying demands of love and of writing itself. --Cherry Smyth Nathan Staples is a man in pain: consumed by loathing and love in roughly equal measure. He is sustained only by his devotion to his estranged wife and their teenage daughter, who thinks he's dead having not seen him for 15 years. His path to grace is strewn with obstacles and challenges.

JONATHAN CAPE.

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Books by KENNEDY,A.L.

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

New Writing 9

Paradise

Now That You're Back

So I Am Glad

What Becomes

Everything You Need

Original Bliss

Now That You're Back

So I Am Glad

Everything You Need