Anal Sex

In an interview I read this week with AL Kennedy she said her writing was rather like anal sex. “If that’s what I want to do and you’re not into it then go away because that’s what will keep happening.”


I am currently reading her latest book Day and I am rather enjoying it. Perhaps that’s just me after all I...

Kennedy has a reputation (in the press, whatever that means) of being difficult. Day is hilarious so far. I don’t know that it’s difficult but it does take place in the eponymous Day (Alfie Day)’s head.

For me this gives it a great economy. Kennedy can flit from scene to scene without all the dull bits. It opens with Day in Germany after the war. He has returned to the place where he was formerly a prisoner to be an extra in a prisoner of war film. He is on an excursion with one of the other cast members, Vasyl, a Ukranian. They are going out to the woods so Vasyl can piss on Himmler’s unmarked grave. Then there is an incident with a Luger and some Germans.

If that’s not plot I don’t know what is. Because that’s what people say about ‘literary’ fiction, isn’t it?

(Ironically my iTunes has just jumped from Pink Floyd to Robyn. Dark Side of the Moon to Konichiwa Blues.)

That it doesn’t have a plot.

Another book I read this week is Donjong Heights. This is a novel written in verse. I wrote a review and that turned out to be almost in verse too:

To the party come Tyrone, his neighbour, and ‘one man, all-night Dub Selecta’, Hylie ‘the fair-skinned Rasta-Queen’ (used to be known as Kylie), Lord Byron ‘governed by his Johnson’, his brother Chester, a pro-wrestler, John J a sozzled former academic and finally Tony, the tailor.
It may all end in disaster.
Oh yes, and don’t forget the omniscient narrator. With a lisp.
‘We find him in the blacketht thtate
Tith truly foul and unpropitioth’

I found myself reading it out loud in bed. If you read last week’s blog you’ll know this is getting to be a regular thing. Luckily this time there were no neighbours up ladders. Nor did I roll down the stairs.

For those of you who care about these things, my welfare, I’m back to work tomorrow. Paid work that is. I haven’t had a day off from writing for months now. I’m on the third edit of The Penguin Variations, two chapters from the end.

In the same article Kennedy said she will edit her novels up to 175 times. So I’ve a fair way to go. Or perhaps it’s because her novels are more like anal sex than mine. If you don’t get it exactly right it can be painful.

Or perhaps it’s just that I’ve had more practice.

(Joke!)

Currently reading - Day by AL Kennedy (keep up!)

Currently listening to - Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp