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21st out of 126 books
—
8 voters
Everything You Need
by
A.L. Kennedy
From the prodigiously talented A. L. Kennedy comes a flamboyantly stylish and fiercely emotional novel about fathers and daughters, creation and self-destruction, and love’s paradoxical power to heal its most devastated victims. One such victim is Nathan Staples, a writer whose hilarious contempt for humanity is surpassed only by his corrosive self-loathing. Along with fiv...more
Paperback, 560 pages
Published
July 9th 2002
by Vintage
(first published 1999)
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I add here a second book from the much-acclaimed Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy. This novel, like Original Bliss (see below), exemplifies Kennedy’s trademark mixture of tenderness and something just this side of pornography. The plot is a bit too complicated to summarize briefly. Basically, Kennedy deals here with two themes: writers and the neuroses that both motivate and hinder (destroy?) them, and the relationship between fathers and daughters. The underlying premise of the second of these them...more
Originally published on my blog here in September 2000.
Everything in this long, complicated novel really boils down to two themes: the relationship between parent and child, and what it is like to be a writer. It is mostly set on a remote island off the coast of Wales which is home to a community of writers. One of them, horror novelist Nathan Staples, has not seen his daughter Mary for about twenty years, since his wife Maura walked out taking the child with her. He has now tracked Mary down an...more
Everything in this long, complicated novel really boils down to two themes: the relationship between parent and child, and what it is like to be a writer. It is mostly set on a remote island off the coast of Wales which is home to a community of writers. One of them, horror novelist Nathan Staples, has not seen his daughter Mary for about twenty years, since his wife Maura walked out taking the child with her. He has now tracked Mary down an...more
If you believed the reviews you would conclude that this book is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s the third of Kennedy’s novels I have read and I have been methodical enough to read them in chronological order. I have noticed two things. Each one is longer than the last. The first seemed more autobiographical than the later ones, though I have no way of proving that. The second was least based on the author’s own experiences, since she could not have been a tail gunner in a Lancaster bomb...more
Do I just not get it because I'm not British/Welsh/Scottish? Sorry.
This was my first exposure to A.L. Kennedy. Of all things, I was swayed to read this by the cover, the fact that I love a good long book, and the blurb on top that declares that if you're "at all interested in contemporary fiction," you can't miss this novel. I slugged all the way through — once you're invested, you do really want Nathan Staples to tell his daughter that he's her father — but by the end was just sort of disgusted...more
This was my first exposure to A.L. Kennedy. Of all things, I was swayed to read this by the cover, the fact that I love a good long book, and the blurb on top that declares that if you're "at all interested in contemporary fiction," you can't miss this novel. I slugged all the way through — once you're invested, you do really want Nathan Staples to tell his daughter that he's her father — but by the end was just sort of disgusted...more
Oct 21, 2007
Effie
added it
every sentance that a.l kennedy writes is as dense as a dark, bitter-sweet chocolate fudge cake... every word is there for a reason... this one is about writing, love, hate, death and lonliness, landscape and one that i will read and re-read.
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Fledgling writer Mary Lamb joins Nathan Staples and other writers at a remote writers colony. Unbeknownst to Mary (and only Mary) Nathan is her estranged father who is still wildly in love, after decades apart, w/ Mary's mother. The original writer's colony members have a pact w/ death - if they escape death seven times, they find fulfillment, and the actual escape reconfirms that life is still beautiful.
Kennedy is an excellent writer, but this effort was too long. The writers continue to attemp...more
Kennedy is an excellent writer, but this effort was too long. The writers continue to attemp...more
"Nathan, I know you and I know what you're like, but there must be limits to even your maudlin self-obsession. Don't roll your eyes, it'll hurt you."
The aforementioned line taken from the last few pages summarizes how I felt about the main character and the author; what neuroses could Kennedy have that she could continue over and over and over again about the main character and his inability to move on?! By the end I wanted Nathan Staples to succeed at his suicide attempts! That aside I did giv...more
The aforementioned line taken from the last few pages summarizes how I felt about the main character and the author; what neuroses could Kennedy have that she could continue over and over and over again about the main character and his inability to move on?! By the end I wanted Nathan Staples to succeed at his suicide attempts! That aside I did giv...more
This is a wonderful book. Beautiful, poetic, and heartbreaking. Everything You Need is set on a remote Welsh island which is home for a small colony of writers. At 18 years old, Mary Lamb goes to join them, and as her short life becomes intertwined with everyone there, it becomes apparent that not everyone is as they seem. The narrative style is fun, with the story told in normal type and the character's thoughts in italics, a practise even extended to the dog. This is the most human and heart w...more
I enjoyed this book. While A.L. Kennedy's writing style takes some getting used to (there are moments of backwards narrative where you feel lost until things are slowly revealed - I found this a little annoying at times), the story is engaging and the characters are interesting. You come to care about them quite a bit over the years (yes, years - the book unfolds over the span of 4 or 5 years). There were times I was genuinely teary-eyed. I felt the book peaked about 80 pages before the end, but...more
I had high hopes for this novel after reading several of AL Kennedy's Guardian articles, but I was sorely disappointed. It manages to be simultaneously contrived and obscure, and frankly it was a chore to finish. I'm afraid I agree with the main character's estranged wife Maura: Nathan Staples is, ultimately, rather boring. I'll try some of her other work, but I don't recommend starting with this one.
You take an island, always a good start. With its sedges and history of localised resentments and furies, loves and losses. You make the inhabitants writers. You bring to the community a young and talented woman with a passion and flair for writing. You make her mentor he father who she does not know is her father. You explore the inside of father and daughter, the inside of their exploring each other, and the confusion of relationships around them including the past relationships, and the cell...more
I read this quite a few years ago - I'm a sucker for good cover art and this one drew me in. In competition with only one other, this is the best stand-alone novel I have ever read. When it's over I just want to read it again, hoping the story will continue. ALK is one of my favorite authors, and I am so glad I found her.
There's no fast paced action, no set pieces. What there is a writers colony and an examination of how the various characters interact. It's a book about relationships within a group in a fairly isolated setting, but it's not Lord of the flies.
You're either on the A.L. Kennedy train or you're not, and I totally am. Life is miserable. Life is beautiful. And the ways that her broken characters experience grace inevitably make me cry.
Wonderful book, will read again over the years. Often books about writers are dodgy but this one was always unpredictable and had my emotions on the run.
The opening set piece alerts you to the fact that this is going to be a dark, dark, hilarious, bleak & beautiful tour de force, and it doesn't disappoint.
This book was unbelievably good and very much a book I would be interested in.
Hard reading but good.
Usually there is nothing I hate more than an author writing a book from the point of view of an author. It usually ends up seeming all whiny about how terrible it is to struggle with one's art. Or, in the case of Stephen King, it ends up with King himself being inserted in his own book as the man who created the universe. Sigh.
However, AL Kennedy manages to carry it off by virtue of the fact that she is such a damn good writer. Plus she's Scottish, so I'll let her off with it.
However, AL Kennedy manages to carry it off by virtue of the fact that she is such a damn good writer. Plus she's Scottish, so I'll let her off with it.
A genuinely moving story of a father's love for his daughter, complicated by the fact that he's extraordinarily neurotic and she doesn't know he's her father. Both are writers, established and aspiring, and live on an island off the coast of Wales which houses a 7-person writers' colony, so the travails of the artistic life are a persistent theme. Plus there is a touch of the slightly macabre black humor in which turn of the 21st century Scots writers seem to excel.
Jesus, this wounded mess is indeed perfect for the heartbroken, the shattered, those that sup on debris and mourn the light. Amazing chunks and weaves of this novel remain intact eleven years later, an amazing feat. Kennedy is both personal and palpable, ultimately relentless, her charatcers you empathize with to the horizons of self-mutilation and abnegation. This novel is laden with resounding slaps and warm, musky hugs.
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I doubt I would ever have come across this author without the "1001 books to read before you die" list. I thought it was really well-written but I never really gelled with the "near-death" motivation of the writers on the island. That part just wasn't presented convincingly enough for this basically happy reader. But I found it gorgeously visual; I could really imagine the island and its beauty. A good read.
This book was beautifully written, too much language, dialog for my taste. I had a love hate relationship with it. Couldn't stop reading it but really wanted to move on, much like the characters in the book.
I found this book completely stunning. The woman is an amazing writer. It is viciously bleak and there are images that made me shudder and that I imagine will haunt me a bit, but also moments of heart breaking tenderness and sadness - the book is also savagely funny and I was captivated by the plot. I was more impressed by this than by anything I have read for a long time.
Outstanding!
Jun 22, 2010
Beth Shields-Szostak
marked it as to-read
1st US edition; small red dot r.m. top edge
it took me almost a month to read this book - but i had to savour it. it's about writers and illusions and death, but in the end - like most good books - it's about life itself, viewed through the eyes of the two main characters father and daughter who live on a remote island with a group of fellow writers.
Kennedy's prodigious hefty novel and apparently lack of a storyline makes it a laborious and unrewarding chore to read. Abandoned at 30 pages.
I was cast into the mind of the torm darkened San Juan islands off the coast of Washingto State as I read through this novel. It's a bleak tour-de-force of the emotional landscape few of us are blessed to articulate in the way that a Kennedy or an Updike are able to.
*The* novel to read for writers-to-be. All the right tricks as far as use of register and perpective goes. Wonderfully written, convincing and very moving. This is the one Coetzee could learn a lot about the writing business from. Seven, eight stars at the least.
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Alison Louise Kennedy (born 22 October 1965 in Dundee) is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work. She occasionally contributes columns and reviews to UK and European newspapers including the fictional diary of her pet parrot named Charlie.
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“The right wrist, because I'm right-handed - so that must be the one that's done most wrong. Although, now that I think, my sins have mostly been ambidextrous.”
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2 people liked it
“Perhaps i am a masochist.
No. Not Possible. If I were basically a masochist then most of my life would have been just nothing but concentrated fun. Every time I woke up, bleeding from my heart and soul, I’d find myself barely able to hide my joy.”
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1 person liked it
More quotes…
No. Not Possible. If I were basically a masochist then most of my life would have been just nothing but concentrated fun. Every time I woke up, bleeding from my heart and soul, I’d find myself barely able to hide my joy.”
