Paradise

A. L. Kennedy

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Almost forty and with nothing to show for it, Hannah Luckraft is starting to notice that her lifestyle is not entirely sustainable: her subconscious is turning against her, her soul is a little unwell. Her family is wounded, her friends are odd, her body is not as reliable as it once was and her drinking is frankly out of hand. Robert, a dissolute dentist, appears to offer a love she can understand, but he may only be one more symptom of the problem she must cure. From the north-east of Scotland to Dublin, from London to Montreal, to Budapest and onwards, Hannah travels in search of the ultimate altered state: the one where she can be happy - her paradise. "Paradise" is a compelling examination of failure that is also a comic triumph, a novel of dark extremes that is full of the most ravishing lyrical beauty.

Reviews

"The book sings its encapsulated pain with the effervescent energy of laughter" The Times
"One of Britain's most iconoclastic and fiercely independent talents, a writer who repeatedly tests our expectations - Compelling, even consuming" Daily Telegraph
"A brave and uncompromising book that lingers in the mind, Paradise is A. L. Kennedy on top form" Independent
"This is a narrative that will not let the reader go - One of the most linguistically inventive and captivating British writers of the age" Observer
"A stylist of the highest order" Financial Times
"Gripping, stylistically consummate" Sunday Times
"Paradise is a symbolic narrative that powers itself on despair and self-hurt... Paradise is a faultless performance of rhetorical nihilism, a dialogue with a world so blurred that it doesn't matter where you are, Dublin, London, Budapest, because nothing matters but the drama of being out of it; in other words, a world in which we don't even notice we're at war." Ali Smith, The Guardian