Now That You're Back

Description

Tender, precise, comic and chilling by turn, the stories in A L Kennedy's new collection confirm her reputation as one of the most exciting new writers to have appeared in the past decade. Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of violence, anguish and love, she examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities. While showing us the unlikeliness of intimacy and the impossibility of communication, Kennedy also reveals the subversive liberation of impotence, the humour of discomfort as human beings chafe together, the crazed claustrophobia of the family and the wildly funny results of an eccentricity unleashed.

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards - including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

This woman is a profound writer -- Richard Ford Kennedy has now proved that she is one of the few young writers to have found a distinctive voice, one that we could recognise even from a couple of sentences; and that in itself is already a considerable achievement -- Jonathan Coe * Mail on Sunday * Powerful, acute and wholly convincing * Sunday Times * Great short stories are rare if not rarer than great poems and the fact that a handful here possess great magical quality is remarkable... A. L. Kennedy is a writer of original and beguiling diction -- Alan Taylor * Scotland on Sunday * Funny, deadpan, angry, tender and despairing * Elle *