Tag Archives: AL Kennedy

#BookReview ‘Day’ by AL Kennedy @Writerer #WW2

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Day, the title of this novel by AL Kennedy, does not refer to a period of twenty-four hours, but to Alfred Francis Day. Alfie. Rear gunner in a Lancaster in World War Two and now extra on the set of a war film. Past and present are mingled together as he starts to remember things he would rather forget. The passages in the bomber are electrifying, in their detail and understanding. The cold, the smell, the fear, how the professionalism of their training kicks in when the action starts. It is totally believable. AL KennedyThe timelines are mixed here as Alfred’s memories are inter-mingled: when Alfred was a member of the bomber crew; his time in a prisoner-of-war camp; and as a film extra in 1949. Where the novel is not so clear, for me, is the intermingling of these three timelines, though after fifty pages everything started to clarify. If you find this, persist and everything will fall into place.
Through Alfred’s memories and his conversations with Ivor, his post-war employer at a bookshop, his bomber crew and the other film extras, we start to piece together the story of his life. It is particularly poignant when he falls in love, heavily, after a fleeting encounter during a bombing raid in London. He meets Joyce in a shelter and from then on she fills his head, when his head should be concentrating on shooting down enemy fighters as his crew drops bombs on Hamburg. ‘Turning his head and turning his head while the heath beyond him dreams, his head pressing back in his pillow and eyes closed and no clear memory he can see, only the wonder that her heartbeat was everywhere in her skin.’
Alfie is a complex character. He is a small man who reads to educate himself. He is nicknamed ‘Boss’ by his flight crew even though he is not the skipper. In flight training, he asks Sergeant Hartnell to show him how to fight and win. ‘Look, son… You’re not the first. Happens quite often in fact. Lads come along and they ask me for help… help with an argument they’ve got to settle back home…’ He tells Alfred his best bet is to hit them from behind with a bit of pipe, but when Alfred gets his chance he throws bricks.
We learn most about him as he remembers his mother and father, both of whom die during the war. In Alfred’s head, his mother and Joyce seem connected and he learns that memories are fickle, the things we would rather forget are the ones that return. ‘Some memories, the ones you’d rather keep – the more you tried to look at them, the more they wore away.’
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

And click the title to read my reviews of these other AL Kennedy books:-
ALL THE RAGE
ON WRITING
SERIOUS SWEET

If you like this, try:-
‘The Paying Guests’ by Sarah Waters
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton
‘Wake’ by Anna Hope

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DAY by AL Kennedy @Writerer via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2C6

#BookReview ‘Serious Sweet’ by AL Kennedy @Writerer #contemporary

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Serious Sweet by AL Kennedy is about one day in the lives of two troubled Londoners, Jon and Meg. I didn’t click quickly with this angry experimental novel and wondered if I missed its subtlety or whether it needed a serious edit. But I stuck with it. AL Kennedy The set-up is intriguing. First we are shown a family on a Tube train, the baby daughter is scarred, the family Arabic in appearance. Next we meet Jon, a civil servant. Pages are dedicated to his rescuing of a baby blackbird tangled in twine. At first, I was touched by the delicacy of his situation and the anxiety of the hovering mother blackbird. Then I became bored with Jon’s internal monologue. Thirdly, we go with Meg to an undefined gynaecological appointment. More internal monologue.
The timeline is confusing. Everything supposedly takes place in the course of one day but there is so much remembering of past events by Jon and Meg, separated by short scenes of seeming unrelated people, at times I lost the will to read on. Why did I? Because it is AL Kennedy and I loved her edition of short stories, All the Rage, so I was prepared to stick with it. But the stop-start stream of consciousness thoughts were often boring and inexplicable. I missed and forgot multiple references. Either the author or publisher or both were not sure how to describe this book – politics (both Jon and Meg rant), self-help, alcoholism recovery, romance or a spy/thriller. I was almost expecting a terrorist bomb. The mystery actually hangs on whether Jon and Meg will meet. They do, finally [at 46% on my Kindle] meet by letter.
It is a long book, 528 pages, which could be so much shorter and tighter. There were moments of clever, beautiful description and thoughts which made me smile, some made me chuckle, but there were others which made my eyes skip to the next paragraph. I finally got it at around 75% and read the last quarter quickly.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

And click the title to read my reviews of these other AL Kennedy books:-
ALL THE RAGE
DAY
ON WRITING

If you like this, try:-
‘Autumn’ by Ali Smith #1SeasonalQuartet
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘The Noise of Time’ by Julian Barnes

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SERIOUS SWEET by AL Kennedy @Writerer via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2bD

#BookReview ‘All the Rage’ by AL Kennedy #shortstories

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What a treat is All the Rage. Twelve stories about love by the inimitable AL Kennedy. Love:  looking for it, losing it, exploring what love is. Instead of describing the stories, I want to celebrate her writing. The way she tells us so much in just one or two sentences. AL Kennedy‘Late in Life’ features  an older couple waiting. They are waiting in a queue at the building society, waiting for him to pay off her mortgage, in a coming-together of two lives. She provocatively eats a fig, being sexy for him “to pass the time.” Despite his hatred of public show, he watches her, “he is now-and-then watching.” He gives her “the quiet rise of what would be a smile if he allowed it. She knows this because she knows him and his habits and the way the colour in his eyes can deepen when he’s glad, can be nearly purple with feeling glad when nothing else about him shows a heat of any kind.”
In ‘The Practice of Mercy’, Dorothy is lost, alone and approaching old age and contemplating her relationship. “She realised once more, kept realising, as if the information wouldn’t stick, realised again how likely it was that someone you’d given the opening of leaving, someone you’d said was free to go, that someone might not discover a way to come back.”
‘All the Rage’ is set on a train platform. A couple are delayed, travelling home from Wales, stuck waiting for a train that never comes. Kennedy tells us everything about their relationship by describing their suitcase. “Inside it, their belongings didn’t mix – his shirts and underpants in a tangle, Pauline’s laundry compressed into subsidiary containments. They had separate sponge bags too. Got to keep those toothbrushes apart.”
Simon, the narrator of ‘Run Catch Run’, considers his unnamed dog, he is at once a child teaching his puppy and also an adult with a mature awareness of inevitability. “His dad had suggested she could be called Pat, which was a joke: Pat the dog. Simon didn’t want to make his dog a joke.”
She shows us so much, in so few sentences.

And click the title to read my reviews of these other AL Kennedy books:-
DAY
SERIOUS SWEET

If you like this, try:-
‘The Story’ ed. Victoria Hislop
‘An Unfamiliar Landscape’ by Amanda Huggins
‘Last Stories’ by William Trevor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ALL THE RAGE by AL Kennedy http://wp.me/p5gEM4-NL via @SandraDanby