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All The Rage

All The Rage, May 2014
by A.L. Kennedy

New Harvest
224 pages
ISBN: 0544307046
EAN: 9780544307049
Kindle: B00FL42G52
Hardcover / e-Book
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"Interesting and Entertaining Views on Love"

Fresh Fiction Review

All The Rage
A.L. Kennedy

Reviewed by Melissa Beck
Posted July 30, 2014

Women's Fiction

In ALL THE RAGE, a collection of short stories by A.L. Kennedy, she explores aspects of love and sex that are a bit unusual. In one story a man has an affair with his maid, although the maid seems to be completely disinterested in him other than the sex. In another story, an older man and a younger woman are in a relationship and have a bizarre discussion about his death, which will inevitably take place before his much younger lover. The funniest story of the collection is entitled "Baby Blue." In this story a woman wanders into a sex shop and has an awkward conversation with the sales person who refuses to leave her alone. The woman in this story swears that she wandered into the shop by accident and can't get out of there fast enough. The writing in ALL THE RAGE is terse to the point where I had to go back and look at some of the pages of the stories a couple of times to understand what was going on in the narrative. I think this is due to the fact that a lot of the writing is the inner dialogue of characters. If you want a different and entertaining view of love, then give ALL THE RAGE by A.L. Kennedy a try. At the very least, it will give you a few hardy laughs.

Learn more about All The Rage

SUMMARY

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.


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