Read For Free All The Rage: Stories Envisioned By A.L. Kennedy Issued As Hardbound

needed to stay in Scotland after His Bloody Documents, And I love me some A, L. Kennedy but this was just a bit flat and onenoted for me, Kennedy is one of those writers that I mean to read more of, But I do have a mixed experience with her, I've loved some of her previous work short stories and sitelinkEverything You Need, but then wasn't crazy about sitelinkSerious Sweet.
This short story collection kind of falls into that category,

There is a lot that I enjoyed in this collection her signature wit is here and also her ability to completely break your heart.
In particular the story of the boy and his dog, and the man clearing out his flat, These stories cut so precisely at the tangled mess of human emotions, But often I felt lost in the prose, not fully understanding what was happening or what was being hinted at.
That may very well be a flaw in me as a reader, or maybe it is the fragmentary, streamofconsciousness style of some of the stories, but whatever the cause it did stop this collection from fully grabbing me.


Regardless, her status as a writer that I need to read more from hasn't changed, I just need to keep in mind that I never know what I'm going to get, There are two voices in AL Kennedys writing the miserablist author, and the standup comic, In All the Rage, her latest collection of short stories, the comic is in fine form but maybe the author is too downbeat for her own good.
She can skilfully pick apart the ridiculous aspects of modern life which we take for granted the Santa Dash, the patter of a sex shop sales assistant but she is too detached from the lives she describes, her resolutely thirdperson narratives a way of keeping her characters at arms length.


The way her comic observations stand out from her more thoughtful passages of prose made me think that Kennedy would be a great flash fiction writer.
Baby Blue, for example, is frustratingly vague and impersonal, until its protagonist somehow arrives in a femalefriendly sex shop, The difference in the writing is marked Kennedy is wickedly funny describing the more or less scifi imitation penises and chocolate condoms I dont feel my experience of oral sex is intended to be primarily culinary.
The Practice of Mercy has a similar passage in which Kennedy ruminates on hotel breakfasts, lamenting the way that hash browns and bacon, those customary AngloAmerican harbingers of obesity and doom have replaced the mysterious continental breakfasts with their plates of unnameable meats and pure, wild colours in jars.
The problem is that I cant really remember anything else that happened in either story,

The stories here mainly concern damaging love affairs, or damaged lovers, and at times there is a sensual tone to Kennedys writing.
Late in Life opens with a woman eating a fig, destroying it in an affectionate way, Later, a character craves the potentially fraudulent kiss of fresh hotel sheets along limbs, All too often, though, she retreats into frosty detachment, in which inanimate objects seem infused with more human qualities than her characters.


From time to time Kennedy manages to combine her acerbic observations with more reflective passages to good effect, as in the title story, which describes a journey disrupted by delay and a change of trains at an unfamiliar rural station as a form of purgatory one which will be familiar to anyone who has to use Northern Rail on a regular basis.
The protagonist, a tabloid journalist, is stranded on the platform with his wife, but still seeks

out opportunities to cast his predatory gaze over the other passengers.
Kennedy describes his tempestuous marriage with relish there was something about kissing her while she tasted of contempt you had to be careful in these areas, and he wouldnt recommend it for someone who flagged under tension, but if you could stand it, but for the most part his thoughts are taken up with memories of a younger woman with whom he had enjoyed a protracted affair.
The amount of time he spends thinking about these women is contrasted with the hasty and brutal reductionism of his work urgent copy to go with urgent tits this weeks tits were wronged, glazed with anguish.
The high point of this story concerns the journalists farcical attempt to attend a demonstration with his young lover, but unfortunately the narrative afterwards trails off into recriminations.


The opening story, Late in Life, is touching and witty, A middleaged woman prepares to go into town with her older lover, who will pay off her mortgage, a prelude to moving in together.
She is energised by the prospect of freedom from her financial obligations, determined to undermine the calm of her nearest building society branch with an outbreak of sex, or something like it, but is dismayed at the lethargy of the people around her, the student of the wandering sort who shuffles past, his business concluded.
He seems exactly as bewildered as he did when he drifted up to make his enquiry, These delays allow her mind to wander, thinking of her lovers closeness to death, and the temporary nature of her happiness.
Here, the writing is tight and the situation definite, with none of the drift that creeps in elsewhere,

Theres plenty to admire in the stories Ive mentioned above, which are insightful, witty and melancholy at once.
But who could ever love a story which begins with the line the thing is, you know theyll be thinking much the same, as A Thing Unheardof does This vague setup is unfortunately the default setting for too many of the stories here, and the cumulative effect of them drains the life from the collection.
When describing her characters, Kennedys writing becomes blurry, impersonal, lacking emotional resonance a sad contrast to the sharpness of her observations.


A. L. Kennedy's riveting new story collection is 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 twelve stories search for love, solace, and a clear glimpse of what their lives have become.
Anything can set them off thinkingthe sad homogeneity of hotel breakfasts, a sex shop operated under Canadian values whatever those are, or 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 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, Alison is a great short story writer, This left me less relentlessly devastated than the other collection of hers I've read: What Becomes, It even has a happy ending, She's clearly going soft.

Would deffo recommend, Love the first two stories, then got tired no matter what time of day I was reading and just wanted it to be over.


To be fair, had I spread this book out over a period of time, I'm sure I would have had a more positive reaction to these stories, which are so full of beautiful prose.
Too many of them followed the model of:

, I'm not going to tell you what this story is about
, But you will require clues, so I am going to catalog a bunch of dour details and negative emotions
.
I'm using second person narration, ARE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE YET
, BIG REVEAL!!!!

So maybe I should read one of her novels, because she is clearly a major talent, but I am not keen on her use of this form.
This is an interesting read, I think I learned more about creative writing from reading this than I did from reading her book 'On Writing'.
It's not really as easy read but I found two of the stories quite moving, What a treat, twelve stories about love by the inimitable AL Kennedy, Love: looking for it, losing it, exploring what love is, Instead of describing the stories, I want to celebrate her writing, The way she tells us so much in just one or two sentences,
Late in Life features an older couple waiting, They are waiting in a queue at the building society, waiting for him to pay off her mortgage, in a comingtogether of two lives.
She provocatively eats a fig, being sexy for him “to pass the time, ” Despite his hatred of public show, he watches her, “he is nowandthen watching, ” He gives her “the quiet rise of what would be a smile if he allowed it, She knows this because she knows him and his habits and the way the colour in his eyes can deepen when hes glad, can be nearly purple with feeling glad when nothing else about him shows a heat of any kind.
”
In The Practice of Mercy, Dorothy is lost, alone and approaching old age and contemplating her relationship, “She realised once more, kept realising, as if the information wouldnt stick, realised again how likely it was that someone youd given the opening of leaving, someone youd said was free to go, that someone might not discover a way to come back.
”
All the Rage is set on a train platform, A couple are delayed, travelling home from Wales, stuck waiting for a train that never comes, Kennedy tells us everything about their relationship by describing their suitcase, “Inside it, their belongings didnt mix his shirts and underpants in a tangle, Paulines laundry compressed into subsidiary containments, They had separate sponge bags too, Got to keep those toothbrushes apart, ”
Simon, the narrator of Run Catch Run, considers his unnamed dog, he is at once a child teaching his puppy and also an adult with a mature awareness of inevitability.
“His dad had suggested she could be called Pat, which was a joke: Pat the dog, Simon didnt want to make his dog a joke, ”
She shows us so much, in so few sentences,
.