Paradise by A.L. Kennedy
I am delicate and the world is impossibly wrong, is unthinkable and I am not forewarned, forearmed, equipped. I cannot manage. If there was something useful I could do, I would–but there isn’t. So I drink. (P. 202)
Paradise by A.L. Kennedy, book 38 in my 50 book challenge for the year, was a recommendation from Blog of a Bookslut, where Jessa Crispin noted that it might be the best book of the year. Michael Schaub disagreed; he thought it was Francine Prose’s A Changed Man, that is, until he read Paradise.
The voice of Hannah Luckraft is always powerful, and at times funny, tragic, pathetic, sharp or blurry. I struggled to limit myself to quoting just one passage above, but the novel begs to be marked up, it is so full of memorable bits. Hannah’s voice runs the gamut, as she narrates this non-linear love story of two drunks. It reaches off the page and draws me in, clutches me in a death-grip until its final, murky end. I was more than impressed by Kennedy’s writing; I was a little scared by it. But I couldn’t look away, either from the writing or from what happened (or didn’t) to Hannah.
Anyone who has read the book, please email me. I must discuss the ending.
June 17th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
you can email me about the ending, girl.
that book was so amazing.
i expect her to win every prize out there this year.
loved it, loved it, loved it.