Original Bliss

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.

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.

An truly original voice that meditates on the relationship between guilt and desire, god and physical pleasure and desire, creating indelible characters that you will not forget.

I greatly admire what A.L. Kennedy accomplishes in her telling of "Original Bliss." She takes two characters, each ensnared by a different brand of loneliness which neither fully comprehends, and has them coming together to establish a sacred bond of compassionate love. To put it more succinctly, Kennedy gives us an author porno-addict and a spiritually lost housewife, and develops an unexpectedly tender love story beginning with their shaky first encounter. Further, A.L. Kennedy realizes a fundamental truth which seems to escape many others: fascination with pornography has more to do with loneliness than with anything else! I cannot understand why this book would offend -- it looks at dark areas of the human heart and says, "here, too, the light of compassion may shine."

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