What Becomes

by A. L. Kennedy
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The latest book from 2008's winner of the Costa Book of the Year

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Synopsis

Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these twelve stories are profound, intimate observations of men and women whose lives ache with possibility – each story a dramatisation of the instant in a life that exposes it all: love and the lack of love, hope and the lack of hope.These men and women are perfectly ordinary people – whose marriages founder; who sit on their own in a cinema watching a film with no soundtrack; who risk sex in a hotel with an anonymous stranger. They conceal tenderness and disappointment, vulnerability and longing, griefs and wonders – and, with each of them, Kennedy finds and opens up that extraordinary emotional wound, that insight into their experiences: like the woman in ‘SaturDay Teatime’ who tries to relax in a flotation tank, before her memories hijack her, taking her back to last weekend’s party – to a boy with a hamster, and his lecherous father – and then further back to another SaturDay, when she was nine years old, when the troubling of her life began. A.L. Kennedy’s fifth remarkable collection of short stories shows us exactly What Becomes of the broken-hearted. She reveals the sadness, violence, hurt and terror, but also the redemption of love – and she does so with the enormous human compassion, wild leaps of humour, and the brilliantly original linguistic skill that distinguishes her as one of Britain’s finest writers.

Editorial Reviews

"'One of the most brilliant writers of her generation.'" - Sunday Telegraph

"'Genius...Kennedy's skill as a writer continues to be astonishing. Every metaphor, every image hits like a painfully well-aimed arrow.'" - Independent on Sunday

"'A virtuoso of prose...'" - London Review of Books

"'If you are at all interested in contemporary fiction, this is work you must not miss.'" - Richard Ford

"A L Kennedy's short stories are rare pearls, all seductive surface and dark depths" - Vogue

"Be warned, Kennedy is a good storyteller, and an even better observer, possessing immaculate timing... She also writes very well: there is an almost jaunty ease about her prose" - Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

"Kennedy's new stories continue the courageous anatomy of emotional pain that has always been at the centre of her writing. Sometimes stomach churning, bleak and humorous in turn, she is rightly viewed as one of the most brilliant and eccentric writers of her generation..." - Ruth Scurr, Times

"AL Kennedy manages to convey an edgy modernity within relatively standard narrative forms ... written with the tonal meticulousness of genuine literature" - Lionel Shriver, Financial Times

"achieves more powerful gut punches in its 217 pages than many novels manage in triple the length...Kennedy has produced another stunning, impressive and genuinely enjoyable collection, hard not to be charmed by" - Claire Sawers, Scotland on Sunday

"In this bleak collection of short stories, the mordantly observant Kennedy explores 'What Becomes' of the broken hearted" - The Times

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