Political and personal questions entwine as Kennedy gives a deft hour-by-hour account of her broken characters’ lives
Early on in Serious Sweet, one of the protagonists gazes across London from Telegraph Hill in Lewisham, surveying “the complicated metallic cylinder” near Vauxhall and the “vast stab of glass” at London Bridge. Considering the more “self-conscious monuments” along the river, Meg observes that insignificant people ridicule these “proofs of concentrated power” by comparing them to domestic objects: a mobile phone, a cheese grater, a gherkin. The art of naming can subdue hostile territory, and she hopes that this can apply to life as well.
More than any of AL Kennedy’s previous books, this is a novel for our times, set in familiar surroundings. The London that emerges is a place that can be loved only in its dingier corners. It’s a broken city, whose pockets of wealth seem designed to preclude intimacy, so it’s appropriate that it should be inhabited by broken characters.
Continue reading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment