Books of the Month

'Paradise' by A.L. Kennedy

In the style of the self-help group session which takes place in a scene in this novel, I feel I should come right out and admit it: my name's Susan and I'm an A.L. Kennedy fan. There. That wasn't so hard. And now at least you're not under any false pretenses. You can take or leave what I say here, but at least you know where I'm coming from. Waiting for a new book by a writer whose work you've liked previously though is often a slightly edgy business. Beneath your anticipation is a fear they'll have let you down - that this book won't match up to previous ones, the ones you loved. You can't wait to read it, but also, if you're honest, you're a bit scared to read it too. 

Paradise is the story, told as a first person monologue, of Hannah Luckraft, approaching her fortieth birthday and questioning her life. She lives alone, she's got an uninspiring job selling cardboard boxes, she rarely sees her family and when she does it's awkward and painful. She doesn't know where she's going. She also drinks too much. The novel starts with Hannah waking to find herself in what both reader and narrator come almost simultaneously to realise is an airport hotel. Together we gradually work out that she's been abroad somewhere, had sex with an ugly married man the previous night, and is in possession of someone else's credit card. And that she has a crashing hangover.

One thing looks like it might redeem Hannah: she's met a man. The jacket notes refer to Robert as 'a dissolute dentist', which seems about right. The two of them seem to work together, to offer each other something to cling on to, but they're also worryingly close to destoying each other. But does that matter? Or, to put it another way, which is more important - staying alive or finding love? This sets the tone for a book of contrasts and contradictions. Hannah - and Kennedy - can find beauty in filth, and vice versa. Humour and despair go hand in hand. Losing yourself is sometimes the only way to find yourself. Nothing can be something. Kennedy's strength has always been her ability to write with brutal, raw honesty about things which others would flinch from or find embarassing, and Paradise is a brilliant affirmation of this skill. She never gives you an easy ride as a reader, she'll force you to think about stuff you probably didn't want to think about that closely, but she'll ease you along with some simply beautiful writing.

Endings are an art in themselves, and this book has a great one. The balance, the sureness of touch, is spot on, and shows that the author is totally in control, knows just what she's doing. So you'll have guessed that by the time I finished the book (complete with that strange feeling you get that you've been carried away somewhere, and suddenly here's reality again, yet it's different somehow) any initial fears I'd had about being disappointed - which were only born of high expectations, after all - were long gone. Squashed. History. If you haven't read any A.L. Kennedy before, Paradise is a good place to start. And if you have, just keep going. This is great.

Susan Tranter

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