Review: All The Rage - AL Kennedy

There are two voices in AL Kennedy’s writing – the miserablist author, and the stand-up comic. In All The Rage, her latest collection of short stories, the comic is in fine form but maybe the author is too downbeat for her own good. She can skilfully pick apart the ridiculous aspects of modern life which we take for granted – the Santa Dash, the patter of a sex shop sales assistant – but there is a sense that she is too detached from the lives she describes, her resolutely third-person narratives a way of keeping her characters at arm’s length.

Read my full review at The Literateur