Original Bliss

Rating:
Summary: A stark, edgy and arresting piece of work by Kennedy
Review: A L Kennedy is regarded as one of today's most promising young writers. Her writing, her way with words, is decidedly contemporary, modernist and may not appeal to readers bred on novels styled the old school way. Kennedy favours the intensely emotional, the dysfunctional and the unmentionable for her subjects. She also believes in the value of shocks, which she delivers with the use of brutally strong language. But you're not offended because it somehow feels right. The honesty and nakedness of the emotions she writes about is made all the more real by the starkness of its expression.

"Original Bliss (OB)" is about how two unspeakably damaged souls find solace and healing in each other. Helen Brindle, the battered housewife, is too numb to feel pain anymore. She has lost her life force, her line of communication with God and makes a desperate connection with cybernetics expert Edward Gluck after she sees him on TV. Unbenown to Helen, her would-be saviour is in a private hell of his own. He loses himself completely in his intellectual pursuit to forget he can't feel and finds unrelenting relief in pornography. Their first unhopeful meeting at a conference in Stuttgart leads to a relationship which can't be adequately described or pidegeonholed as an affair because that would be too limiting. Their relationship is both tentative and desperate. Like two wounded animals touching each other as a prelude to rediscovering their own beating hearts. Kennedy's prose is choppy, claustrophobic and suffocating but how else should it be if we're to understand Helen's and Edward's predicament ? We also mustn't forget Mr Brindle, Helen's abusive husband. He's a monster and inexcusable even if he doesn't know it himself.

OB isn't exactly an easy or pleasant read. It's edgy and awkward in parts. The words - especially the dialogue - don't flow. They stutter and jerk because our two protagonists are only just learning to articulate. The words they speak form snatches of broken sentences because they're as much directed to themselves as to each other. Nonetheless, OB is an impressive and arresting piece of work. Kennedy is clearly an original talent and one whom we will surely hear alot from in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Great drama, starring an emotionally-flawed cast
Review: A.L. Kennedy Knopf, Jan 199, $21.00, 214 pp. ISBN: 0-375-40272-1

In Glasgow, Helen Brindle wonders what she ever did to become trapped in a marriage to her verbally abusive and violent spouse. Her ego is so shattered that Helen suffers from an A to Z list of mental disorders.

Desperate for help, Helen reads a book on mental healing by the self-proclaimed guru Edward Gluck. Helen decides he can actually help her and travels to Stuttgart to obtain the renowned Edward's aid. Helen and Edward are immediately attracted to one another, but he has as many phobias as she has. Worse yet, unlike her, he does not trust his own mental healing techniques. Ultimately Helen returns home, but Edward keeps sending her postcards confessing his love for her. When the abusive Mr. Brindle intercepts one, Helen's life is in danger from his reaction, leaving it up to Edward to hopefully come to his beloved's rescue.

ORIGINAL BLISS demonstrates why A.L. Kennedy is considered one of the top Scottish writers today. Her relationship story line constantly moves forward, but it is the depth of the characters that turn this into a wonderful reading experience. The three prime players all suffer from some form of mental disorder that either leaves them paralyzed, self-loathing, or violent. However, readers will feel empathy towards Helen, pity towards Edward, and disgust towards Mr. Brindle. This novel is a great relationship drama, starring individuals whose flaws overwhelm them.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: If we do not have faith that this beautifully- shaped, sharply observed, often darkly comic story will arrive at the destination we anticipate, we might well find the novel all but impossible to read. Likewise, we need to believe in the narrative voice, that it has the authority and ability to perform multiple triangulations as it reveals the details of of lives that are lonely, bereft, corporeal. Every Cinderella tale risks providing a too-easy solution, and this one comes perilously close. Fortunately, we and the story are brought around by the writer's keen insight and gorgeous, edgy, compressed, sensual, poised, precise, vivid, surprising language that fairly bristles with life on the page.

Rating:
Summary: Overblown Bliss
Review: Like an earlier reviewer, I was very disappointed with this work, considering the positive critical reception it received. Mrs. Brindle's home life, her loss of God, and the essential meaninglessness of her days are well drawn. Kennedy's style seems to suit the main character's emotional and spiritual impoverishment. To believe, however, that Mrs. Brindle would be rescued from life with her physically abusive, monster of a husband by a megalomaniac pornography addict was beyond crediblity. That readers have been capable of accepting this as some sort of love story amazes me. All I could think was that the ending was some sort of bizarre tongue-in-cheek feat. Like an earlier reviewer, I found the style cramped and claustrophobic. Reading the book was a bit like listening to a fingernail being scraped across a blackboard--the short phrases really grated after a while. I would not recommend the novel at all.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful meditation on the nature of God and sensuality
Review: Original Bliss is a story of strength and weakness side by side. Helen and Edward need and are hurt by the lust and love for each other. Told in a frank and adult manner this book is definitely not for children.

Rating:
Summary: A stark, edgy and arresting piece of work by Kennedy
Review: This book contains very little meaningful interaction, a transparent plot and useless conversations. What's the point?I dont think there is one.