A. L. Kennedy

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	Photo: © David Thompson

Biography

Novelist and short-story writer A(lison) L(ouise) Kennedy was born in Dundee, Scotland on 22 October 1965. She studied English and Drama at Warwick University where she began writing dramatic monologues and short stories. She was Writer in Residence for Hamilton and East Kilbride Social Work Department and won the 1990 Social Work Today Award.

She has worked for the arts and special needs charity Project Ability since 1989, first as Writer in Residence (1989-95), then as editor of Outside Lines magazine, and has been a member of the Management Committee since 1998. She was editor of New Writing Scotland (1993-5) and was Writer in Residence at Copenhagen University in 1995. She reviews for The Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald and the Daily Telegraph, is a contributor to the Guardian, and has been a judge for both the Booker Prize for Fiction (1996) and The Guardian First Book Award (2001). She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2000.

Her first book, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (1990), a bleak collection of short stories set in Scotland, won several awards including the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. In 1993 she was named as one of Granta magazine's 20 'Best of Young British Novelists 2'.

Other short story collections include Now That You're Back (1994) and Original Bliss (1997), and her novels include: Looking for the Possible Dance (1993), which centres on a young Scottish woman's relationships with her father, her lover and her employer; So I Am Glad (1995), winner of the Encore Award, which focuses on the trauma of child sexual abuse and its consequences in adulthood; and Everything You Need (1999), the story of a middle-aged writer living on a remote island and his attempt to build a relationship with his estranged daughter.

She wrote the screenplay to the BFI/Channel 4 film Stella Does Tricks, released in 1998, and edited New Writing 9 (2000) with John Fowles, published in the UK by Vintage in association with the British Council. Her book of short stories, Indelible Acts, was published in 2002.

A. L. Kennedy lives and works in Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2003 she was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. Her latest novel is Day (2007), winner of the 2007 Costa Book of the Year Award; and her most recent collection of short stories is What Becomes (2009).

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Genres (in alphabetical order)

Fiction, Screenplay, Short stories

Bibliography

Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains   Polygon, 1990

Looking for the Possible Dance   Secker & Warburg, 1993

Now That You're Back   Cape, 1994

Last Things First - New Writing Scotland 13: Part of the 1995 Scottish Book Fortnight Promotion   (co-editor with Jim McGonigal and Meg Bateman)   Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1995

So I Am Glad   Cape, 1995

Tea and Biscuits   Phoenix, 1996

Original Bliss   Cape, 1997

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp   British Film Institute, 1997

Everything You Need   Cape, 1999

On Bullfighting   Yellow Jersey Press, 1999

New Writing 9   (editor with John Fowles)   Vintage, 2000

Indelible Acts   Cape, 2002

Paradise   Cape, 2004

Day   Cape, 2007

What Becomes   Cape, 2009

Read about books by A. L. Kennedy at encompassculture.com - the British Council's book database and global online book club

Buy books by A. L. Kennedy at Amazon.co.uk

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Prizes and awards

1990   Social Work Today Award

1991   Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize   Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

1991   Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award   Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

1991   Scottish Arts Council Book Award   Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

1993   Scottish Arts Council Book Award   Looking for the Possible Dance

1993   Somerset Maugham Award   Looking for the Possible Dance

1994   Scottish Arts Council Book Award   Now That You're Back

1995   Encore Award   So I Am Glad

1995   McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year   (shortlist)   So I Am Glad

1995   Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award   So I Am Glad

1995   Scottish Arts Council Book Award   So I Am Glad

1999   Scottish Arts Council Book Award   Everything You Need

2004   Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award   (shortlist)   Paradise

2007   Costa Book of the Year Award   Day

2007   Costa Novel Award   Day

2007   Lannan Literary Award (Fiction)

2007   Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award   Day

2010   Scottish Arts Council Book Award   (shortlist)   What Becomes

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Critical Perspective

When looking across the spectrum of A.L. Kennedy’s writing, versatility and lucidity are her apparent trademarks. Her novels have encompassed subjects such as the alcoholic woman, the suicidal writer and a Lancaster bomber tail-gunner left over from Second World War and in her non-fiction, bull fighting has been another area of interest. The style of her fiction and non-fiction never fails to be compelling and is also often unbearably perceptive.

Her first novel, Looking for the Possible Dance (1993), has its focus on Mary Margaret Hamilton in its engagement with human relationships and was followed by So I am Glad (1995), which has abuse and love and loathing as central themes.

Everything You Need (1999), her third novel, may be defined as a study of depression and/or a warning about the dangers of writing. It is an emotive work that illuminates Kennedy’s ability to be insightful with the combination of poignancy and humour. When two lovers, Richard and Lynda, are described we are left in no doubt about their unsuitability: ‘Having begun to sag equally and grow scared of a lonely future they were now – like phlegm and a chest infection – almost entirely inseparable.’

The over-arching philosophy, which merges with the spiritual, comes with the growing attachment between novelist Nathan Staples and his adult daughter, Mary Lamb. He engineers her visit to Foal Island, where he lives, ostensibly for her to be the seventh writer at the retreat, but his main imperative is to meet and get to know her. This is based on the premise that she does not know his true identity, and he is afraid to tell her. He is also unable to accept himself, which is made manifest in his suicide bids, but when he finally comes to accept ‘niceness’, which he had earlier abhorred as a writer, it is suggested that he has found a version of peace and, perhaps, everything he needs.

Through Hannah Luckraft, the first-person narrator of the fourth novel Paradise (2004), the delusions and self-justifications of an alcoholic are delivered with a cutting dark wit: ‘And I mean, my life is nowhere near as simple as it may appear. Being me is a job – is labour so time-consuming and expensive that I have a second job just to support it.’ She tells of misfortune and blackouts in her ‘badly planned life’ and the novel begins as she gradually and confusedly tries to piece together the events of the previous evening. This confusion also influences the structure as the narrative switches across time, and the chaos comes to a climax in chapter 12 (of 14) in a surreal nightmare journey that she undertakes in search of love and sobriety.

Hannah’s life is distanced from the simplified clichés that could lazily explain why she began drinking and the narrative points the way instead to a lifelong sense of difference (even freakishness) when comparing herself to others. The addiction to alcohol just makes this difference visible. 

In Day (2007), the eponymous Alfie Day relives his experience as a prisoner-of-war as an extra in a film in 1949. This is a controlled and subdued investigation into the damage inflicted by the Second World War as Alfie fails to adjust to the loss of his fellow crew members from his bomber plane. His civilian life before and after the war is touched upon, but only to give an emphasis to the excitement of his war-time experiences. As befits a war novel, he is also tortured by these memories:

‘This morning he could feel them, inside and out, bad thoughts getting clever with him, sly. They lapped like dirtied water behind his face and outside him they thickened the breeze until the surface touching him, pressing his lips, was far more quick and complex than only air.’

First, second and third person voices are shifted between and it is particularly rare for the second person (‘you’) to be used in this way. Although Kennedy is complimented by Ursula Le Guin for her ‘narrative gift’, Le Guin then goes on to argue that this use of the second person is not effective: ‘Telling a story aloud, we may all slip into the second person, in the present tense, as a ploy to include the listener. This “you” is plural; it means “we”. It works fine in stand-up comedy – which is one of Kennedy’s talents. But she employs it to tell what a single person, Day, is thinking and feeling. Used thus, where shared experience can’t be assumed and there is no “we”, it is relentlessly intrusive.’ (The Guardian, 7 April 2007).

Alternatively, this perceived intrusiveness may be understood as being a key device as the unassuming Alfie forces the readers to be included in his narrative. His life before and after the war is characterized by not only the influence of his violent father, but also his working-class background. In Alfie’s war, the class lines were blurred if not erased and the use of ‘you’ is a representation of his speech and is in keeping with the attempt to give validity to his class position. Furthermore, as well as offering inclusivity, ‘you’ is simultaneously a means to dissociate Alfie from the readers, and Alfie from himself, as he relives the out of the ordinary events. Because the second-person narrator is used so infrequently, it has a potentially defamiliarising effect and reiterates the impact that the war has had on him.

The thoughtfulness that is evident in Kennedy’s novels is also apparent in her short stories. Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (1990), Now That You’re Back (1994), Original Bliss (1997) and Indelible Acts (2002) are testaments to her ability in this field.

On Bullfighting (1999) is a detailed non-fiction work that unsurprisingly looks at the history and facts associated with bullfighting. It follows, given the subject matter, that this is also a contemplation of death in life. This is underlined in chapter one as Kennedy explains her own suicidal impulse ‘by way of a preamble’ and tells of her decision to step down (rather than jump to her death). She promises honesty and reveals that she has no prior interest or enthusiasm for this subject: ‘I was simply asked if I would write this and I simply agreed.’

She wanted to see if she was still capable of writing and ‘to discover if the elements which seemed so much a part of the corrida – death, transcendence, immortality, joy, pain, isolation and fear – would come back to me. Because they were part of the process of writing and, good and bad, I miss them.’ Her output following this book demonstrates that these themes and emotions have, fortunately, returned with a vengeance.

Julie Ellam, 2008

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Further reading on this site

Edinburgh Bookcase
The British Council Literature Department and British Council Scotland showcase contemporary writers at the Edinburgh International Book Festival every two years, in partnership with the Scottish Arts Council. The Bookcase... more...   (09/06/2004)

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Contact information

Publisher (General enquiries) Jonathan Cape Ltd Random House UK Ltd 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London  SW1V 2SA England Tel: +44 (0)20 7840 8539 Fax: +44 (0)20 7932 0077 http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/

Agent Antony Harwood Ltd 103 Walton Street Oxford  OX2 6EB England Tel: +44 (0)1865 559 615 Fax: +44 (0)1865 310 660 E-mail: mail@antonyharwood.com http://www.antonyharwood.com

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Related links

http:/ / www.a-l-kennedy.co.uk

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