All the Rage

The dazzling new collection from the Costa Prize-winning author of Day and The Blue Book. She doesn’t ever lie to him unless it’s for the best. A husband and wife wait for a train as their relationship unspools silently around them. A woman contemplates the idea of her lover dying as she queues in a bank. An almost impossibly uncomfortably lunch culminates in a passionate kiss. In this dazzling collection of stories lies the battlefield of the heart, where characters who have suffered somehow emerge – haltingly, awkwardly – into the astonishment of intimacy.

Reviews of All the Rage

"One of the most consistently dazzling writers of her generation… Kennedy's stories are a little like love: no matter how many times they break your heart, you still come back for more. This collection proves, once again, that it is always worth it." — Katy Guest Independent on Sunday "Kennedy is brilliantly, painfully funny about the fault-lines and disaster zones of the typical relationship" The Times "This book celebrates love like a hungry dog celebrates the corpse of a rabbit… Kennedy is, if you like, the Anti-Cartland… Magnificently bleak." — Jojo Moyes Independent "It is Kennedy's portrayal of the difficulty, if not seeming impossibility, of connecting with other people that makes these stories so moving… Kennedy's disjointed, angular style and weird, displaced atmospherics really work" — Lionel Shriver Financial Times "A.L. Kennedy's masterful new collection… Stories appear to roam chaotically, like the mind, but of course they are neat, perfect messes." — Vicky Allan Herald