What Becomes

A.L. Kennedy’s fifth collection of short stories show us exactly what becomes of the broken-hearted. Her characters 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 or who order a luxurious meal as their lives fall apart – but the stories she weaves around them are truly remarkable. She reveals the sadness, violence, hurt and terror, but also the redemption and the love – and she does so with enormous human compassion and leaps of black humour. From the winner of the Costa Book Award for Day.

Reviews of What Becomes

"The hardest thing about the advent of a new collection of stories by A L Kennedy… is the search for synonyms for 'brilliant'. Her uncanny dialogue is as note-perfect as J D Salinger's her vision as astutely bleak as Alice Munro's, and her ability to summon up a society in a few strokes rivals William Trevor's" Spectator "A first-rate collection" Sunday Telegraph "A.L.Kennedy really dazzles, yet again, in her exceptional new collection" Independent on Sunday "Kennedy's new stories continue the courageous anatomy of emotional pain that has always been at the centre of her writing. Sometimes stomach churning, bleak and humorous in turn, she is rightly viewed as one of the most brilliant and eccentric writers of her generation" — Ruth Scurr The Times "If you are at all interested in contemporary fiction, this is work you must not miss" — Richard Ford