All the Rage

Availability:
Ebook in EPUB format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2014

ISBN-13: 9781770894648

<p>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 recognizable.</p><p>Here, as before, lies the battlefield of the heart, where characters who have suffered disaffection, alienation, or emotional damage somehow emerge — haltingly, awkwardly — into the astonishment of intimacy. And here, too, are the ones who will not shake off the hurt and the loss, who will not come through.</p><p>The extraordinary title story takes place on a railway platform, with a couple waiting for a train that never comes, and opens out into the husband's shocking admission of years of deceit, and a devastating portrait of a failed marriage, a failed man. Another story shows a woman who is, in every sense, lost and who finds herself — to her bewilderment and alarm — walking the aisles of a sex emporium holding an electric penis. There is great compassion in Kennedy’s stories, and deep, dark humour, but also a stronger sense than ever before that emotional paralysis can be loosened — that an impossibly uncomfortable lunch, say, between two apparent strangers, can culminate in a passionate kiss. “You do not know this man. He is practically a stranger. Only he's not.”</p>