Awards
A New York Times Notable Book for 2000
Synopses & Reviews
When M. Jennifer Wilson first meets her new housemate, he's glowing in the dark and suffering from amnesia. He calls himself Martin, but that's only because Jennifer said that she was expecting someone named Martin. In time, Martin reveals that he is actually Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, the famed eighteenth-century writer, lover, and duelist. What unfolds between Savinien and Jennifer is a surrealist love story by turns darkly funny, sexually disturbing, and achingly insightful.
In So I Am Glad, A. L. Kennedy, award-winning author of Original Bliss, has crafted a stunning novel as delightful and bizarre as it is stark and humane. As Savinien struggles to come to terms with his singular past, Jennifer wrestles with her own dark and haunting personal history, and the two overcome all obstacles as they propel readers down a fabulously quirky path that ultimately leads to genuine hope and a redemptive love.
Review
"Kennedy's 1995 novel So I Am Glad is seeing U.S. publication, and we are treated to another of Kennedy's funny, sad, fantastical stories....[Kennedy] drinks from the same romantic well as the Scottish pop band Belle and Sebastian. So I Am Glad is, in a sense, a fable for adults, yet it's Kennedy's treatment of unease and isolation that is most convincing. Much of her best writing occurs outside of the love story, in Jennifer's lengthy asides and flashbacks. Kennedy gets fired up by the lacunae and margins of life, where she points out the unexpected beauty to be found in the grotesques hiding there." Elise Harris, Salon.com
Review
"The mordant not to say morbid humor and predilection for cold-bath shock that distinguished Kennedy's first novel published in this country, Original Bliss, mark her even stranger and more ambitious second foray as well....[Jennifer] responds with equanimity to the weirdness that has entered her life, and it is her cool account of the wildly improbable that makes this novel so arresting. Kennedy's deadpan irony her dialogues, in particular, have a noirish sitcom feel and her beautiful, translucent descriptive passages project a dreamlike aura over what is finally, despite its narrator's protestations, a moving story." Publishers Weekly
Review
"With taut prose and much tenderness, Kennedy tells the story of [Jennifer and Savinien's] slow struggle sometimes comical, sometimes painful to connect with each other....Kennedy has created a new kind of romantic ghost story. An absolute original." Veronica Scrol, Booklist
Review
"Captivating....Funny, mysterious, and so original that it is easy to suspend all disbelief." Chicago Tribune
Review
"Kennedy explores the improbability of [her protagonist's] love with the gravity of a philosopher and the license of a daydreamer." The New Yorker
Review
"A love story that's highly imaginative and surprisingly poignant...yet amusingly ironic in tone." The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
A. L. Kennedy lives in Glasgow, Scotland.