Synopses & Reviews
All the Rage was named to the shortlist of 'Best Short Story Collection 2014' by The Frank O'Connor Prize.
A.L. Kennedy, the author of The Blue Book and Day, writes like a force of nature. Claire Messud says shes “one of Britains most iconoclastic and fiercely independent talents.” Richard Ford calls her “a profound writer,” and Ali Smith dubbed her “the laureate of good hurt.”
All the Rage is Kennedys riveting new collection, a luscious feast of language that encompasses real estate and forlorn pets, adolescents and sixtysomethings, weekly liaisons and obsessive affairs, “certain types of threat and the odder edges of sweet things.” The women and men in these dozen stories search for love, solace, and a clear glimpse of what their lives have become. Anything can set them off thinking—the sad homogeneity of hotel breakfasts, a sex shop operated under Canadian values (whatever those are), an army of joggers dressed as Santa. With her boundless empathy and gift for the perfect phrase, Kennedy makes us care about each of her characters. In “Takes You Home,” a mans attempt to sell his flat becomes a journey to the interior, by turns comic and harrowing. And “Late in Life” deftly evokes an intergenerational love affair free of the usual clichés, the younger partner asking the older, “What should I wear at your funeral?”
Alive with memory, humor, and longing, All the Rage is A.L. Kennedy at her inimitable best.
May 2014 Best Book of the Month by Amazon in the Literature & Fiction category
Synopsis
A dozen sharp new stories by one of contemporary fiction's acknowledged masters
Synopsis
A. L. Kennedys latest collection of stories is an investigation of “certain types of threat and the odder edges of sweet things”—another intense and luscious feast of language from the author of
The Blue Book and
Paradise. “I want to describe my genuine circumstances on the occasion in question, but I cant,” confesses the narrator of “Baby Blue,” who finds herself “somewhere like a very big grocers . . . a supermarket full of sex.” Kennedy hilariously explores the comic possibilities of fake genitalia before landing on a heartbreaking note.
In “Takes You Home,” a man tries to sell his apartment, the emptiness of the rooms. Its a journey to the interior that is both harrowing and humorous, as he considers the benefit of showing off the old kitchen rather than renovating—it “only quietly asks to be replaced and will shrug when its knocked to pieces and hauled away and not take it personally one bit.” Swarming with memory and moments of grace, All the Rage is Kennedy at her inimitable best.
About the Author
A.L. Kennedy is the author of The Blue Book, What Becomes, and several other novels and collections. Twice named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, Kennedy won the Costa Book of the Year Award for Day. She lives in London.
Table of Contents
Late in Life 1
Baby Blue 15
Because Its a Wednesday 35
These Small Pieces 47
The Practice of Mercy 59
Knocked 73
All the Rage 85
Takes You Home 133
The Effects of Good Government on the City 151
Run Catch Run 171
A Thing Unheard-of 187
This Man 199
Acknowledgements 213