A L Kennedy

Again, back by popular demand – the bit where the journalist with no preconceptions whatsoever meets the author – or slaps together something from cuttings – and then presents the unwary public with another variation on a theme of A.L.Kennedy.

Please don’t be overly tetchy with the following writers – A.L.Kennedy is a workaholic who occupies most of her time with numbed travel, events and caffeinated typing.

She has no children and likes to preserve the privacy of others, rather than blurting their cock size and breakfast preferences all over the Sunday supplements.

This makes life hard for the average journalist.

“I don't think we are complacent about her exactly, but I'm not sure we've ever fallen in love with her the way we probably should... We are pitched on the edge of the abyss: we don't want to look over and we don't want her to look over for us, either. We can't love her. We might get hurt.”
Gutter Magazine

“There is something of the night about A.L.Kennedy”
Rosemary Goring – Glasgow Herald

“It would be a disaster if Kennedy were to climb out of the Eeyore costume and give up novels or grumbling for good.”
Katy Guest – The Independent

“ They’d mention the videos of executions and torture on her shelves, her small collection of ceramic eyeballs and prosthetic limbs…”
David Robinson – The Scotsman

“Her wit is pretty deadpan which has led some critics to take seriously commenst about her personal life which are deeply ironic. Worse, it has led others to make glib connections between the characters in her book and her own personality.”
Stuart Kelly – Scotland on Sunday

“Scottish comedian A.L.Kennedy won the Best Novel category for Day…”
Medway Messenger

“You can't help wondering if some of her moroseness derives from the ever-present fact of physical pain. (This will go up on her website in the glib psychobabble section.)”
Geraldine Bedell – The Guardian

“She is radiantly well-scrubbed-looking, with a big, warm, enthusiastic manner.”
Jenny Turner – The Guardian

“Alison Kennedy opens the door of her sepulchral flat in Glasgow, head bowed and muttering incomprehensibly. She is round-shouldered, blue-jeaned and bare-faced… small, hunched person.”
Julia Llewellyn Smith – The Times

“The picture of well-adjusted bonhomie… her eyes were dazzling.”
Tom Adair – Glasgow Herald

“Berkoff was a tough act to follow, but A.L.Kennedy is no slouch as a performer herself.”
Colin Donald – The Scotsman

“When she reads her stories she lights up the room with the rhythm of her sentences, the reach of her insight.”

“She has the open and shut face of a 12-year-old girl.”
Ajay Close – Glasgow Herald

“With such a skilful mixture of debility and repartee, who’s to say what’s real and what’s just camouflage ?”
Ajay Close

“She looks like an angel dressed for the street with an unpainted face, an irregular smile and hair punishingly pulled back.”
Kate Kellaway – The Observer

“She often seems pale to the point of translucence; she is plagued with pain from distortions of her spinal column.”
Catherine Lockerbie – W magazine

“In the time that it takes to nod and smile, Kennedy has moved in for the coup de grace. “This article, she says, smiling, a sharky, neat-toothed grin, “is therefore unnecessary.” E.
Jane Dickson – The Daily Telegraph

“.. the figure hunched at the head of a boardroom table, on the fifth floor of the Random House headquarters, looks far from happy.Her skin is so pale that you fear it couldn’t survive normal daylight and almost her first words are to request that the harsh office lights be turned off. She speaks in a voice that’s barely a whisper and sips water frantically as if trying to quench some terrible thirst.”
Christina Patterson – The Independent