All the Rage: Stories - Hardcover

Kennedy, A.L.

3.2

223 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0544307046 ISBN 13: 9780544307049

Publisher: New Harvest, 2014

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A.L. Kennedy, the author of The Blue Book and Day, writes like a force of nature. Claire Messud says she’s “one of Britain’s 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 Kennedy’s 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 man’s 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 clich�s, 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.

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Review:

"One of the most consistently dazzling writers of her generation... Kennedy's stories are a little like love: no matter how many times they break your heart, you still come back for more. This collection proves, once again, that it is always worth it." (Katy Guest Independent on Sunday)

"Kennedy is brilliantly, painfully funny about the fault-lines and disaster zones of the typical relationship" (The Times)

"This book celebrates love like a hungry dog celebrates the corpse of a rabbit... Kennedy is, if you like, the Anti-Cartland... Magnificently bleak." (Jojo Moyes Independent)

"It is Kennedy’s portrayal of the difficulty, if not seeming impossibility, of connecting with other people that makes these stories so moving... Kennedy’s disjointed, angular style and weird, displaced atmospherics really work" (Lionel Shriver Financial Times)

"A.L. Kennedy's masterful new collection... Stories appear to roam chaotically, like the mind, but of course they are neat, perfect messes." (Vicky Allan Herald)

Book Description:

A dozen stories: a dozen ways of looking at love, or the lack of love. Over five previous collections, A. L. Kennedy has shown herself to be a master of the short form, with a perfect way with sentences and a voice so distinct as to be instantly recognisable. Shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award

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