Everything You Need - (Vintage Contemporaries) by A L Kennedy (Paperback)

About the Book

From the prodigiously talented A.L. Kennedy comes an unabashedly moving novel about fathers and daughters, creativity and self-destruction, and love's paradoxical power to heal its most devastated victims.

Book Synopsis

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 five equally dysfunctional colleagues Nathan lives on an island retreat off the coast of Wales, where he yearns for the daughter he lost years before. Now, in defiance of all his hopes, Mary Lamb-herself an aspiring writer-is about to join him as the seventh member of the colony.

As Nathan tortuously wins the trust of the child who has no inkling of their true relationship, Mary comes to a gradual understanding of her gift. In Everything You Need, A. L. Kennedy combines the mythic resonance of Arthurian legend with a sensibility as lyrical as it is profane.

Review Quotes

"Gorgeous and visceral . . . profound, tender . . . [Kennedy's] most accomplished work to date." --The Wall Street Journal

"Kennedy is as disconcertingly accurate at tenderness as at wildness. . . . A passionate writer, on the edge and at risk." --The New York Times Book Review

"A virtuoso of prose. Her phrasing is fine-tuned and supple to the highest degree: intuitive and subtle about the multifarious sensations of being alive." -London Review of Books

"To read Kennedy is to be captivated by an elegant, idiosyncratic intelligence at work." --Elle

About the Author

A. L. Kennedy has received many prizes for her work, including the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award, and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.