All the Rage was named to the shortlist of Best Short Story Collection
by The Frank O'Connor Prize
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 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.
