A.L. Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Hard going

I like A.L. Kennedy's radio work very much but, rather to my shame, this is the first novel of hers that I have read.  I'm afraid I found it pretty hard going.

This is a book which effectively recounts twenty-four hours in the lives of two decent, flawed people in London.  There is very little plot; it's about the nature of life in the city today and about the thoughts and character of the two protagonists.  In many ways, it's very well done.  Kennedy's depictions of aspects of modern life are acute, insightful and morally very necessary at the moment.  Her characters are utterly believable, and her depiction of their internal monologues is remarkably well done as they deal with the minor and major trials and joys of the day and of their lives.

But, dear me, there's a lot of it!  I felt about this rather as I did about John Banville's Ancient Light; wonderful writing, brilliant evocations of emotional states, memories and so on often through the depiction of the minutiae of life – and that 500 pages of it was just too much.  The style which makes a 10-minute radio talk so brilliant begins to feel a bit like wading through treacle after a couple of hundred pages.  Kennedy doesn't always judge it perfectly, either, I think.  I marked two brief early passages:

"And there was the toy-box clutter of the City, a slapdash collection of unlikely forms or the vaguely art deco confections at canary Wharf and, dotted about, the distant filaments of cranes that would lift more empty peculiarities into the undefended sky" which  thought was brilliant (and somewhat reminiscent of Mervyn Peake's opening descrition of Gormenghast Castle). 

And then this, a few pages later:

"This was her equivalent of maybe passing warm pebbles from hand to hand, smooth and reliable, or her version of the rosary, her misbah, her mala, her kmboloi, her worry beads…" which made me think "OK, OK!  I got the point at misbah!"  I found the whole thing a mixture of the beautifully judged and the slightly overblown and it became quite a slog for me.

It comes down to this, I think: if you like A.L. Kennedy's style in large doses, you'll like this and if you don't, you won't.  Personally I found it too much for too long, but you may well disagree; there's some very good stuff here and it may well be worth a try to see if it agrees better with you than it did with me.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)