Original Bliss

The stories collected in Original Bliss are concerned, appropriately, with the complexities of sex and the lack of it. In the long novella that gives the book its title, Helen Brindle thinks she has lost God – but it is simply love that she’s missing. She can’t find it at home, with the violent, deadly Mr Brindle, but will she find it in Stuttgart when she meets the enigmatic Edward E. Gluck, with his Process and his paraphernalia? And what happens when her father confessor starts to confess? A beautiful and terrifying examination of passion and pornography, of the aching need for completion and healing.

Reviews of Original Bliss

"Kennedy explores the dark byways and cul-de-sacs of love. She turns her clear, clever prose unflinchingly on jealousy, perversion and tangled desire. But she is as sympathetic as she is sharp in her observations and profound in her thinking" — Kit Spring Observer "Kennedy's great gift throughout for amused honesty, the clear-eyed dissection of sexual and emotional hang-ups…gives the book its rare cargo of resonance… It sparkles with beautiful observation" — Steven Poole Independent on Sunday "A revelation. It's the best piece of writing A. L. Kennedy has yet done" — Jenny Turner Independent "The supremely original writer among a gifted generation of young British fiction talents" — Tom Adair Scotland on Sunday "A delight… Subtle, erotic, ambitious and accomplished" New Statesman