So I Am Glad

by A.L. Kennedy

The ferociously talented author of Original Bliss and On Bullfighting offers this haunting tale of two forlorn people who find in each other a hope and love as genuine and original as this marvelous book in which they come to life.

M. Jennifer M. Wilson has decided to become a voice. A professional enunciator, an announcer, a voice-over artist, she has retreated into a world of words. Behind the sound-proof double doors of the recording studio she must surely be safe from the painful inconveniences of hate and love. Until reality breaks in and Jennifer uncovers the harsh vocabulary of addiction and the addictive extremes of sex. -An alchemical romance, a Swiftian satire for our times, an impossible spiritual journey and a devastating plummet into insanity and perversion, So I Am Glad is oblique, incisive, hilarious and horrific.

Genres: Fiction, Scotland, Contemporary, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Literary Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Alison Louise Kennedy 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.

Reviews

[Paul]

This is a difficult one to review and to categorise. It could be described as a fairy tale/fable, it is certainly satire; there is a love story thrown in (of sorts) and a touch of magical realism. The issues explored are serious ones, including child sexual abuse and its later life consequences for the protagonist Jennifer Wilson. It is set in Glasgow, with a brief foray to Paris.
Kennedy writes well and her prose is lyrical and sharp with some very amusing asides relating to the political backdrop (written in the mid-1990s). Jennifer is something of a lost soul whose body and emotions are missing any real link between them. Jennifer avoids emotions. Her much quoted description of the casual sex she finds herself having is illuminating;
“Like an inadvertent Irish dancer tied up in a hot canvas sack, like a mad traffic policeman tangoing through ink, like a killer whale fighting to open an envelope.”
Life begins to change when she and her housemates take in a man who has forgotten his name. Over time her remembers, he is Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (yes that Cyrano). You are left to decide for yourself who Savinien is; ghost (he seems real enough and relates to all the other housemates and even manages to fight a duel in a Glasgow Park!), imposter or the real thing. Jennifer and Cyrano begin to have feelings for each other and there appears to be a healing process and working through going on. But, of course Kennedy is not so straightforward as to make this a redemptive novel and the ending emphasizes this.
There were some odd notes, especially the violent BDSM session with the ex-boyfriend; although for once the male partner was on the receiving end and it did fit with the response pattern that Jennifer had developed. There is a deep vein of humour, some of which ought not to be funny. The style is distinctive and I can understand why some people just don’t get along with it. I did find it insightful, although it took a while to engage my attention.

[Elena Sala]

SO I AM GLAD (1995) has a protagonist, called Jennifer, who seems cold, insensitive and detached. The reader might figure out that her parents might be at the root of her lack of emotions but she expressly tells the reader that this assumption is wrong.

Her parents fight each other all the time and then they reconcile and have sex before young Jennifer. Once they had sex while driving at high speed around a snow covered landscape. Jennifer was seated on the backseat while this thing went on. Unsurprisingly, she concluded that life with her parents was unsafe.

When she is old enough to live alone she develops a fondness for sadomasochistic practices. In fact, one day she has sex with Stephen, a co-worker, and they indulge in some of these practices which Jennifer describes minutely. At first Stephen enjoys it, but then she becomes quite vicious and hurts him badly.

One day, an unexpected visitor arrives at her house: Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac. Yes, THE Cyrano de Bergerac, the French novelist with the large nose. Poor Cyrano has lost most of his memories from his previous life. Not surprising, since he died in the 17th century. Jennifer sees a tenderness in him and falls in love with him. However, he comes from death and is too damaged, and one day he dissappears silently. He joins a group of violent Glasgow drug addicts. At one point, "tender" Savinien kills a trusting stray dog. He describes in loving detail the way it whimpers and tries to escape until he managed to cut its throat right into its spine. Then, he and his junkie friends braise the dog and eat it. I suppose this gruesome scene is meant to describe Savinien's degradation but for me, it was simply too much.

Savinien will return to Jennifer and will both begin a process of emotional healing. Is Savinien a 300 year old ghost? I don't know.

I feel I'm being too generous with my two stars. Kennedy seems to be considered a gifted writer (but it seems not many people read her books, judging from Goodreads). I didn't like her confusing prose style, her dialogues are really grating (she reproduces each and every sound a person produces when speaking). Her characters are insufferable and the plot is improbable, completely lacking of verisimilitude. The violent scenes are gratuitous and disgusting. I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone, I could find nothing to redeem it.

[Stas]

kennedy is one of my favorites, along with Angela Carter and Penelope Fitzgerald. I used to be obsessed with a girl who believed that she was the Cyrano in one of her previous lives. Reading this book at the same time was pretty cool.

[Alexis]

I remember liking this book enough to track down more of A.L. Kennedy's work but I also remember knowing that I did not completely understand what was going on throughout the story. Images from it stick in my head and that is always the true test for me of a book I ultimately look back on with great affection and reverance if not complete adoration. I probably read this in 2002, it is a book I associate with my friend as I think we both read it although I cannot remember if it was her love for it or mine that got us to share it. I can't quite see her really having loved it but until I ask her I wont be sure. Regardless, there was something to the darkness of it that made me recall it today and put it on my list.

I have an association between So I Am Glad , Anagrams by Lorrie Moore and Don DeLillo's brief The Body Artist which accounts for some of part of why Kennedy's novel remains in my thoughts but I think revealing the reason for the association would probably count as a spoiler so I will stop here.

[Armand]

I chose this book on a total whim; I didn't even know what it was about, and I kept at it for about 130 pages, but it just didn't hook me in the way I'd hoped.

Kennedy is a solid literary stylist and has a gift for describing the minutiae of human existence (without being dull), and it's always a treat to read something in a Scottish dialect (although not over-the-top like Irvine Welsh's stuff), but at the end of the day, the tendency to eschew strong plot for deep character focus just didn't pull together for me the way I'd hoped. I'm sure that I would have finished it if it had been a short story or novella.

I can see why people would really like this book, but it just wasn't for me.

[Emma]

Cyrano de Bergerac turns up in Partick, fights a duel in a park just off Crow Road. I was charmed by this book.

How about a sequel : 'Choderlos de Laclos in Kelvinside'?

[Atie Reynaert]

I don’t now whether I absolutely love this or hate it

[livi]

For uni

[Joana Bacana]

Representação de mulher autista... interessante...

[Caroline Taggart]

This book has had wonderful reviews, but I found it a real struggle and nearly gave up several times. The narrator, Jennifer, is a misfit, someone who doesn’t do feelings and relationships. She reads – new bulletins and the like – for a living. Fair enough – potentially a very interesting character. She’s living in a shared flat in Glasgow and when the new flatmate appears, he turns out to be a reincarnation of the long-dead French author Cyrano de Bergerac. OK, no problem with that, or with their developing relationship, although I found the broken English he spoke difficult (and therefore annoying) to read. But what‘s with the unpleasant S & M sex scene with the ex boyfriend? What’s with the weird upbringing in which Jennifer had to watch her parents having sex? What’s with the perfectly reasonable but irrelevant political comments on the bulletins she has to read?

I very much like Jennifer’s tone, the way she addresses the reader directly and talks frankly about herself and the way she is writing the book. I’m sure A L Kennedy is a very talented writer. But for me there was too much here that just didn’t hang together.

[Kitty Henning]

It took me a while to get into this book it I think that may have been purely because I wasn't used to Ms Kennedy's writing style. There were a lot of undercurrents in this book, it may be one that actually takes two or three readings to get the most from it.
The building of the main character is slow, but as more and more is peiced together a truly alive and real person emerges, much more than just a character in a novel.

[Karen]

Eh? Jennifer was an intelligent, witty, self-aware narrator, knowing when to expand on a scene, when to draw a curtain over it; the dialogue between the flatmates was sharp, funny and believable. But I just had no idea what was going on with the plot. Every time Martin/Savinien opened his mouth I switched off.

[Catherine McGrath]

Reading for uni. Nicely written, I like the style. Could have used some kind of warning. Maybe it's just me, maybe I read it at the wrong time, because I generally have no issue reading dark stuff. However, the moments discussing how her parents sexually abused her, and the BDSM scene gone wrong, just left me so uncomfortable that I had to stop reading. I still feel weird. Probably more a me thing so I'll give this book a middling rating to balance the good writing with how gross I feel

[Emma]

She can write, she really can evoke emotion, touch on the unsayable. Unfortunately, she only started writing like that in the final chapter. I wished the whole book had been like that. Instead, there was a lot of un-Savinion related gibberish, internal monologue, distracting side lines. Tedious, almost impossible to progress through.
And. There could have been so much more Cyrano in this book.

[Alexa Bonetto]

Es un libro muy interesante, raro, con una magia muy particular. A magia me refiero a encanto, porque no hay magia de por sí, aunque ocurren cosas inexplicables.
No es el libro que más me gustó hasta ahora de A.L.Kennedy, pero siempre es un placer leerla.
Para los amantes de Cyrano de Bergerac, seguro es un libro encantador.

[Cherry]

A difficult one to rate. I suspect I'd enjoy it more on a second reading, when I'm not expecting a rational explanation for the weirdness! Great writing. Interesting to be in the head of such a cold and isolated character.

[CO]

It’s been such a long time that I enjoyed a book too much and didn’t leave it’s side until I finished it.
Of course, it took me approximately 150 pages to understand the plot but once I grasped it, I couldn’t stop myself.
Had a great experience. Thanks.

[Mark Steven]

Enjoyed this - a magical realist love story. Well paced, tender and wry. Slightly let down by some overwrought passages that could have used a firmer edit, but don't let that put you off - AL Kennedy is always rewarding.

[Mairi Byatt]

Like meeting an old friend! Stunning novel, incredible concept, and heart breaking ending! So glad I was forced to buy a book in a charity shop!

[Gene]

She Savinien on my Cyrano till I Bergerac

[Dave Thomas]

http://electrichalibut.blogspot.com/2...

[Hameedat]

rereading because I didn’t appreciate it the first time round

[Kate]

"What could happen between the professionally calm and the long-term
dead?" Behind this incantation from the recent prize-winning Scottish
novel So I Am Glad, one can almost hear the chuckle of its mad-scientist
author, A.L. Kennedy. Her story--a romance set in contemporary
Glasgow--is at once inopportune and darkly funny. Its overall success depends
upon the reader's willingness to humor a bizarre plot device: Savinien de
Cyrano de Bergerac--the seventeenth-century philosopher, not the
familiar large-nosed character from the play--wakes up one day in a house
shared by three Scottish gen Xers. There he falls in love with Jennifer: a
radio announcer, S&M aficionada, and "calm person" for whom language is
as empty of emotion as she is. (Unlike most people, who have "whole
hordes of feelings, all barrelling round inside them like tireless moles,"
Jennifer confesses she has "a certain moley something missing.") Like
the non sequiturs that punctuate their dialogue in the early chapters,
Kennedy's two lovers initially seem like unrelated concepts; she
connects them through the language of courtship, until, as Savinien tells
Jennifer, their "lives [are] speaking directly, having set us aside."

Kennedy encodes her characters' neuroses directly into her prose, which
is one of the most entertaining aspects of So I Am Glad. For example,
Jennifer's description of sex--"like a mad traffic policeman tangoing
through ink, like a killer whale fighting to open an envelope. [I]t
really makes no sense to me"--makes her bewilderment, and the reader's,
literal in overdetermined, nonsensical similes. Unfortunately, as Jennifer
and Savinien become more intimate, Kennedy's verbal fireworks dissipate,
fading out almost entirely by the end of the book. In spite of their
intriguing quirks, the two main characters, when combined, produce a
fizzle: safe, but somehow disappointing when one had been prepared for a
small explosion.

[Helen Varley]

a couple of pages into this book i realised that i've already read it. i knew i'd read something by this author but i didn't realise it was this one. i think this is more of a reflection on the poor state of my memory for non-essential things, rather than on the quality of the book - i now have a vague memory of liking it the first time round, so let's see what i think this time ...

ok now that i have read it again i can say that i am disgusted by my bad bad memory. this is a great book, kennedy's language is rich & wonderful, she portrays very real characters & is a great storyteller. i hope i don't forget it again!!

[Lydia Clarke]

I liked this, but I had to skip some pages in the middle and toward the end. I thought the idea was pretty good, and the writing is worthwhile, but it's not really well put together. It was definitely vivid, and there are some good parts... I can't recommend it hands down, but I wouldn't say it's not worth reading.

[Gilly McGillicuddy]

From my LJ post at the time:

I'm actually liking a book I'm having to read this year, which is.. oh so wonderful news. Book is "So I Am Glad" by A.L. Kennedy, by the way. >.> I keep researching Cyrano de Bergerac now, because it's fun to find parallels. I suppose I've never stopped being a research maiden.

[Denise]

I've heard so many positive things about ALK, and being Scottish bumped her a little bit further up my to-read list. I have put it down to being bad timing, or a bad first read, but I just couldn't get into this book. It felt a bit too much like hard work.
It's going back to the library, but I will definitely have another go, perhaps a different book next time.

[Kris]

Wonderful writer -- and a very weird book. I liked the writing and the way that the novel connected imagination with reality, but the plot and characters are weird enough (a man who glows in the dark and is a reincarnated Cyrano de Bergerac, a woman seemingly without emotions who has an extremely checkered sexual past) that the book might not be everyone's cup of tea.

[Sandra]

Initially disappointing because very different from 'Paradise' which I thoroughly enjoyed, and also I am not a fan of the vaguely fantastic. Nevertheless, the writing, as ever, was such that I was drawn in, kept re-reading sentences for joy in their construction, and able to enjoy the story of it, even though I finished feeling slightly guilty that I knew nothing about Cyrano de Bergerac.

[Jon]

Lovely bit of strangeness. A woman finds her new housemate is ... No, I can’t even give you that much without spoiling it a bit. Sufficed to say its a sweet sort of magical, mixed with sordid and gritty sort of realism. Is in large part about writing and writers without being too navel gazing.

Also sad stuff and sex which is how you know its Alison’s work. Would deffo recommend.