WHAT BECOMES

'One of the most brilliant writers of her generation.'
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'A writer rich in the humanity and warmth that seems at a premium in these bleak times.'
Salman Rushdie

'Genius... Kennedy's skill as a writer continues to be astonishing. Every metaphor, every image hits like a painfully well-aimed arrow.'
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

New short-story collection from the winner of last year's Costa Book of the Year

Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these twelve stories are profound, intimate observations of men and women whose lives ache with possibility.

These men and women are perfectly ordinary people - whose marriages founder; who sit on their own in a cinema watching a film with no soundtrack; who risk sex in a hotel with an anonymous stranger. They conceal tenderness and disappointment, vulnerability and longing, griefs and wonders - and, with each of them, Kennedy finds and opens up that extraordinary emotional wound, that insight into their experiences: like the woman in 'Saturday Teatime' who tries to relax in a flotation tank, before her memories hijack her, taking her back to last weekend's party - to a boy with a hamster, and his lecherous father - and then further back to another Saturday, when she was nine years old, when the troubling of her life began.

A.L. Kennedy's fifth remarkable collection of short stories shows us exactly what becomes of the broken-hearted. She reveals the sadness, violence, hurt and terror, but also the redemption of love - and she does so with the enormous human compassion, wild leaps of humour, and the brilliantly original linguistic skill that distinguishes her as one of Britain's finest writers.

The author of five previous novels, two books of non-fiction, and three collections of short stories, A.L. Kennedy's most recent book, Day, was the Costa Book of the Year. She has twice been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and has won many prizes including the Lannan Literary Award, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at Warwick University.

Throughout August A.L. Kennedy will also be premiering her new one-woman show 'Words' at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Praise for Day

'She depicts a world banal and monstrous, weirder than weird and utterly familiar. Kennedy is unique in having been selected as one of the best Young British Novelists twice in a row, and Day proves why she is still far more adroit and more interesting than some of the panflashes those lists have produced… Day confirms, if confirmation were needed, that Kennedy is a singular, superlative author.' - Stuart Kelly, SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

'Kennedy does bleak the way the Russians do epic; unremittingly, awesomely and undershot with redeeming humour.' - Gillian Bowditch, THE SUNDAY TIMES ECOSSE

'Day is more than a novel, it is an investigation into the difficulties of being alive.' - Eileen Battersby, IRISH TIMES

'Kennedy is a brilliant writer. Sentence by sentence, few can match her.' - Toby Litt, FINANCIAL TIMES

'A L Kennedy has built a reputation as one of the fiercest, most bloody minded and thrilling British writers and her new novel more than backs that up… Day is an utterly engrossing read.' - Jonathan Gibbs, METRO

'Kennedy writes with keen, precise, quirky intelligence and artistry.' - Helen Dunmore, THE TIMES

'Among the several recently published novels dealing with World War II, A L Kennedy's stands out for its visual immediacy. The author doesn't simply evoke that era, she draws you into the heart of what it was like to have been there… Kennedy's writing combines poetic beauty with the storyteller's gift of keeping you engaged, as she weaves together past and present with an assured touch. A stunning read.' - Claire Colvin, DAILY MAIL

'Day is a very good novel. It is largely about love, as most novels are, but the author's skill with language… makes the average cliché unique… Historical details become flesh and funny in her hands… What ultimately comes out of this novel, though, is the unnerving sense that war is about fighting people just like us.' - Katy Guest, INDEPENDENT

'A L Kennedy is a fearless writer… Once again, Kennedy brilliantly interweaves over-wrought internal dialogue with external outrageous acts. The unfolding tenderness of nature and of amity blend superbly with the casualness of daily horror.' - Catherine Taylor, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

'Everything this style touches it brings alive, whether the smallest stage direction- or the most incidental detail. This is a remarkably clean lined book, of highly literary construction, that still feels huge and wide ranging. Day is a forceful, wholly achieved piece of work by a writer of enormous power. It ought to win all the prizes going.' - Tim Martin, DAILY TELEGRAPH

'A moving portrait of one man's fight (both internal and external) as well as an affirmation that, if fiction is 'about' the human condition, war fiction isn't really, or only, about war, but about the human condition in extremis.' - Martyn Bedford, LITERARY REVIEW

'A L Kennedy has found in war the subject that her art cries out for… elegant…A L Kennedy has written a fine novel about the Second World War by knowing what not to expose to the daylight.' - Kate McLoughlin, TLS

'A L Kennedy…is a lavishly talented writer… Day does not disappoint.' - Sue Hubbard, NEW STATESMAN