Everything You Need

by A.L. Kennedy

Nathan Staples is a man in pain, consumed by loathing and love in roughly equal measures. Frustrated and appalled by his life and the way he lives it, he is sustained only by his passionate devotion to his estranged wife, Maura, and their teenage daughter, Mary—whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years, and who thinks he’s dead. When Nathan contrives to have Mary invited to the island where he lives in retreat, he sets in motion the possibility of telling her he is her father, and of becoming whole and complete and alive again.

The path to grace, though, is strewn with obstacles and challenges. The obsessive island dwellers are trying to cure themselves through trial by extremity while, over in London, Nathan’s editor, only friend and one link with his literary career—the brilliant, loyal, hopeless Jack—is drinking himself into the ground. And Mary is torn emotionally between familial love for the two uncles who brought her up in loco parentis and the beginnings of a romantic, sexual life beyond.

With her new novel, A. L. Kennedy has written a work of something approaching genius—its surface bright with turmoil and damage, its depths profound and turbulent. A brilliant examination of human frailty, cut through with bitter, helpless comedy and agonizing grief, Everything You Need is a novel about a man who has nothing, a man who will be healed only when he finds the lost grail he once held in his the ability to give and receive love.

Genres: Fiction, Scotland, Literary Fiction, Literature, 20th Century, Novels, Modern

560 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Alison Louise Kennedy is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work. She occasionally contributes columns and reviews to UK and European newspapers including the fictional diary of her pet parrot named Charlie.

Reviews

[Tony]

Just tell her. Tell your daughter she's your daughter. Tell her you're her father. How hard is that? Just tell her.

JUST.TELL.HER.

She was four when your wife told you goodbye and took her. And don't follow, she said, or else. Or else being that allegation. But you didn't do that and it doesn't seem you took the threat seriously. So you didn't follow. Not even just a few years later when your wife abandons your daughter to her gay brother and his lover - the Uncles. Surely then you could have asserted a right. Instead, you wait on a little island - an island where you are one of seven writers. It's quiet there. And home to an odd literary inspiration. Instead of having affairs or driving in traffic or talking to someone with a real job, instead of, you know, real life, you and the others attempt suicide: hanging yourself, swimming with sharks, that sort of thing. You never succeed, the point being to come real close.

It is to this island that you contrive to bring your daughter, who now aspires to be a writer. You award her a Fellowship. She comes. To be mentored by you. This would be a good time to tell her, sometime in the seven years she's there. You do not tell her. You almost kill your dog in yet another suicide attempt. But you don't tell your daughter she's your daughter.

It would have been, I firmly believe, a wonderful conversation, because this book is full of great conversations. And, not counting the dog, there are three great characters, but with buts.

The Uncles are superb. . . but after showing us how wonderful they are, we are then told, over and over and over again, how wonderful they are. And your drunken but intelligent, articulate, funny editor is a superb character. . . but was it really necessary for him to go to a gay dominant to get an enema and a tooth pulled, other than the author's well-known need to shock?

I liked this book, even if I don't sound like I liked this book. But I feel used.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus, this wounded mess is indeed perfect for the heartbroken, the shattered, those that sup on debris and mourn the light. Amazing chunks and weaves of this novel remain intact eleven years later, an amazing feat. Kennedy is both personal and palpable, ultimately relentless, her charatcers you empathize with to the horizons of self-mutilation and abnegation. This novel is laden with resounding slaps and warm, musky hugs.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I forced myself through this long, punishing book, some of the most hyper-aware, self-conscious, overworked, labored, self-admiring writing I’ve ever read, trying to remember who had recommended it to me and why I listened and reminding myself, this is why I don’t read contemporary literary fiction. The characters and their interactions bore no relation to any persons I’ve ever known, as is often the case. The more a novel gets close to a longlist or a shortlist, it seems, the larger the certainty I will loathe it.

Verb-abuse is legion. Kennedy is one of those who insist on torturing us by taking all sorts of parts of speech, but most often nouns, and enverbing them:

• Nathan gentled over to his bookshelves…
• All his very personal alarms were tripped and sirening anyway.
• …a kindness which mauled through her…
• The undiluted thought of her birled in him.
• I do eel my hands in round her and lift her…
• …while his balance Ferris-wheeled inside his skull…
• She closed her eyes and, in the small pause of dark, watched her need kiss down against him, raw and lipping him to the root.
• It was a good one: the sea morsing sunlight across the length and depth of the shockingly blue horizon…
• She forked at her carrots with displaced resentment.
• Eckless sleeked around his feet…
• …fluttered in the pit of her stomach and sleeked in beside the raw tick of syllables…
• …white little flicks of life mouthed by…
• Mary had sugared Nathan’s mug…
• Mary brushed his shoulders with her hands and shrapnelled him through…
• A dab of proprietary vertigo tambourined between his shoulder blades.
• …a proper barber’s shave to clean and pink his skin…
• She felt the stumbled fuss of the passage slew and shudder, almost half around Bryn…
• Nathan hared silently through conversations he might conceivably begin…
• I barefoot across the woolly lawn of carpet…
• Nathan footled with the papers in his pocket…
• And, every night, syringing in under his better judgement…
• Mary’s hand dunting him awake…
• …dunting together and nursing our separate miseries…
• They walked out of the office, gently dunting away at each other.
• The two men juddered to a halt…
• The air juddered, paused again…
• …to flap and judder in time with my feet…
• Fear oiling out from his kidneys…


There’s also this cringeworthy sex scene; I’ve left out the internal monologue parts (enormous chunks of the novel are two characters’ internal monologues):

She felt the dip and nudge and then the full arrival of his whole warmth there, stretching beside her, the first stiffness of his arms and then their familiar clasp around her, the first, joint give of their breath. …And then her speed was back, clock springing under his hands, breaking into an open glaze. …They wallowed in a guddle of clothes, gently rucking about to uncover themselves, their hard facts. For a while, she couldn’t believe she’d ever be unpeeled, free and taut inside nothing but avid skin. She couldn’t believe the tremor of his arms against her shoulders as he lifted the entire, pale gift of himself to half above her, one stroke of heat already near enough to touch….

Fluid appetite, jerked sound and give and purchase and anxious weight: their first words in each other opened out. There was a snag of hip bones, a failure of their beat, a sweet, raw collapse and then a flurry towards something better, their hands attentive and only a little desperate…And nothing to distract her from biting him until she tasted metal and then straightening her spine for their next fit…

They slowed to blink at each other’s faces, somehow dazzled. He levered up from her again and he watched her watching the moving gleam of him: the round push and the draw of him and the pout and the cling and the shine of herself, just painting him with herself. They smiled, openmouthed, making what they wanted and making more want.

She craned up to lick his chest and knew she was deeper than she’d thought. Each fall and oiling, tugging rise proved how well she held him, complete. She could feel herself becoming a pure astonishment.

This is a 19-year-old and her new lover, losing their virginity. Afterwards, her two gay uncles come uninvited into the bedroom with a tea tray: “Each of them tasted bedroom air, thick with the low-tide spatter of protein and the sweet, shellfish surfaces of Mary’s privacy.”

[Carla Stafford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything You Need, by A.L. Kennedy is my personal favorite of the three books I have read by her to date. I have mentioned before that she has a cutting, poignant, unique, and sometimes cryptic voice. Everything You Need is no exception.

The central character of this novel is Nathan Staples. Nathan is a writer of gruesomely titillating crime novels, a lost soul who detests most all of humanity-himself most of all. He resides on a little island with other writers who periodically take "steps" (aka near death experiences) to renew their commitment to and their passion for the written word. Nathan's island home brought to my mind the Island of Misfit Toys. Joe, the godlike founder and overseer of this tragic little writing community holds Sunday "family" dinners in his light house with his broken adopted family of misfit authors. Like a good father, Joe guides them all, knows them well, protects them, and has stores of compassion for their broken lives and shattered hearts. He also possesses a clandestine, divine like presence that borders on creepiness. If not for Joe's moments of transparency and tenderness- Joe's ability to seemingly read minds and bring people back to life-to cast himself as a character in the dreams of others-may be a pinch off putting.

For Nathan, Joe has agreed to and arranged for Nathan's estranged daughter Mary Lamb, an aspiring young writer to join his Island of Misfit Authors. Mary believes her father to be deceased. Nathan is assigned as Mary's mentor. As a reader, I felt myself holding my breath, clenching my fists, laughing, and weeping-as a neurotic Nathan who very much adores his never forgotten daughter, manages to provide Mary with an unflinching love that he himself has never known. I savored the nuances of Kennedy's writing, that showed rather than told of the deep loyalty, intimate knowledge, and dedicated love Mary is able to form for the self deprecating, complex man that she doesn't know is her father.

Dark, funny, tragic, heart wrenching, twisty-and altogether lovely-in the ugly-pretty way that life often is. Everything You Need is-well, everything you need in a novel.

"Nathan only wanted to be left alone. And also he wanted to never be left alone again. And he wanted to be loved by those he loved and to be set free from them, every one. And he wanted to be able to love those he loved and able to hate them, too. And he wanted to rest at ease in his skin and in his time and place, while he wished to abandon them completely and be gone. And he wanted to die of wanting and he wanted to be properly alive. And he wanted to be thought of fondly and never to be thought of at all. "

A.L. Kennedy-Everything You Need

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

How quietly, how quickly A.L. Kennedy has taken a place in the pantheon of contemporary novelists. In America, she remains something of a treasured secret, but in Britain, this 36-year-old Scottish woman has already racked up a half dozen impressive awards. She's even served as a juror for the Booker Prize.

Her latest novel, "Everything You Need," is unlikely to change her position on this side of the Atlantic. It's marvelous and horrendous, full of extraordinary insight and sensitivity, but burdened with enough depravity to repel the larger audience she would otherwise attract.

This strikingly odd story revolves around two related activities: writing and parenting, sources of mingled pleasure and despair for Nathan Staples. We meet him during a bungled suicide attempt, a calamity that leaves him depressed and rope-burned. He's a misanthropic pulp novelist, who hasn't written anything good since his wife ran off and took their little girl 15 years ago.

Despite his episode with the noose, he's finally figured out a way to see his daughter, and possibly even be a parent again. Mary Lamb is now 19 and an aspiring writer. She thinks her father died long ago, but Nathan has secretly arranged for her to win a seven-year scholarship to study on Foal Island, a writer's colony off the coast of Wales.

This commune is one of the many marvels that fans relish about Kennedy's inventive fiction. The Foal Island Fellowship floats just shy of ludicrous. Nathan and six other strange writers live on their "rain-asphyxiated" island alone, enduring each other and the equally unpredictable weather.

Their gentle leader encourages them in a vaguely defined mystical tradition that involves "facing extreme risk" seven times. They scoff at his quirky idealism even while engineering brutal acts of self-destruction. (Mary stays in the house of a past member who cut off his head and hands with a circular saw.)

These tortured souls wear the scars of a writer's life on their sleeves - and minds and bodies. They're people who understand Red Smith's famous observation that "writing is easy. Just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

They come together for monthly business meetings marked by the kind of profane acrimony only professional writers (or smart sailors) could articulate. But after each bruising battle, they retire for Quaker-like sessions of communal meditation.

It's difficult to imagine why a normal 19-year-old woman would leave her loved ones for seven years to study with this group of grotesque misfits. And it's difficult to imagine why Nathan tutors his daughter for seven years without getting up the courage to tell her who he is. But that's why we need a novelist as good as Kennedy to imagine these wonderful things for us.

Mary Lamb's seven years pass in a leisurely series of anecdotes and conversations over more than 500 pages that are hilarious except when they're heart-breaking. Kennedy writes in a syncopated style that's perpetually surprising, mingling her own voice with the internal and spoken voices of her characters. (Even Nathan's big-hearted dog jumps into the mix now and then.) This is a novelist of extraordinary emotional breadth, as willing to be sweet and sentimental as she is to be coarse and repellent.

While Mary struggles under her father's alternatively irascible and affectionate instruction, we read selected chapters from his autobiography, a secret labor of love that illustrates his failings as a parent and implicitly begs for forgiveness. Kennedy celebrates fatherhood in all its wonder, but she can also clear your head with the blank terror of loving a child so much.

Early in her sojourn on the island, one of the writers tells Mary, "You are willing and - if you think about it - volunteering yourself to take charge of the medium that governs and lies, that defines and dreams and prays, that witnesses truth and condemns to death. And, naturally, such a large thing will take charge of you. It will give you appetites you've never known."

Nathan knows the cost of devoting one's life to writing, a craft that simultaneously cures and exacerbates loneliness. Seeing his daughter lit with the same passion and beginning to make the same sacrifices excites his pride and frightens him. His Zen-like writing advice is pretty thin (Rule #3: Disregard all praise and criticism), but as a story about a life of words, "Everything You Need" is literally everything you need.

The publishing industry receives a particularly brutal rebuke from J.D. Grace, Nathan's droll and "forensically compelling" editor in London. He's a repulsive character, dying from a host of illnesses and self-inflicted wounds. The despair he feels about the poor condition of publishing reflects in his own increasingly depraved behavior, rendered here in shockingly explicit detail.

Such is Kennedy's thematic universe, an utterly original mixture of wit and tragedy, ordinary and bizarre, outrageous and sweet. That's enough.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0719/p1...

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

You take an island, always a good start. With its sedges and history of localised resentments and furies, loves and losses. You make the inhabitants writers. You bring to the community a young and talented woman with a passion and flair for writing. You make her mentor he father who she does not know is her father. You explore the inside of father and daughter, the inside of their exploring each other, and the confusion of relationships around them including the past relationships, and the cell membrane that lets in stuff from the world beyond the island. You focus on the nature of writing. You focus on the eroticism of writing and minds. You see how close fathers and daughters are to needing a desert island to work it all out. And you add the finest of writing, from the finest of contemporary Scottish writers, Alison Kennedy. You have Everything You Need.

[Katie Elmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book makes out with itself while you are the third wheel looking on. The amount of adverbs in this was disgustingly, appallingly, embarrassingly astronomical

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do I just not get it because I'm not British/Welsh/Scottish? Sorry.

This was my first exposure to A.L. Kennedy. Of all things, I was swayed to read this by the cover, the fact that I love a good long book, and the blurb on top that declares that if you're "at all interested in contemporary fiction," you can't miss this novel. I slugged all the way through — once you're invested, you do really want Nathan Staples to tell his daughter that he's her father — but by the end was just sort of disgusted by the characters. Not one of them seemed likeable; everyone is a sad sack. Particularly Nathan, whose self-absorption never lets up in a whole 545 pages. No character arc, no betterment, just repetitive self-pity. I wonder if I'd have liked it better if I didn't mind constant italicized thought paragraphs, which are prevalent and which I find inelegant. Ironically this book is about the struggle of writing and crafting perfect sentences... I found it to have been quite the struggle.

[Effie]

every sentance that a.l kennedy writes is as dense as a dark, bitter-sweet chocolate fudge cake... every word is there for a reason... this one is about writing, love, hate, death and lonliness, landscape and one that i will read and re-read.

[Jayant Maini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book.......excellent......!!!! It has captured the complexity of the human nature brilliantly......!!!! The protagonist is brittle...frail......but he is impactful......his inner contradictions.......are the highlight of the story. But I feel the main theme as has been correctly pointed by a number of reviewers is that of pain.........physical agony....the mental pain.........and it seems like hell......!!! His love for his daughter is real and at times it is so painful.........that you feel it.....!!! It is poignant piece of work.......and astonishing.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly straightforward novel about a writer's colony where one man is trying to reveal that he is the father to his daughter, another writer on the island. He struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts. Both father and daughter suffer from heartbreak, but come to appreciate each other's company.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure at first whether to be taken in or put off by what seems like this book's self-conscious strangeness. A writers' colony where the members cultivate near-death experiences as a means of getting closer to their craft, a father who maneuvers to bring his long-estranged daughter (who is unaware of his identity) to said colony, lots of flashes of (mostly imagined) gore, and an aging and foulmouthed editor drinking himself to death--at times it approaches marvelous, Pippi-Longstocking-for-adults strangeness and at others it simply strains credibility.

But maybe credibility isn't everything. Nathan Staples, physically ailing and creatively stalled, arranges for his 19-year-old daughter, Mary Lamb, to become the newest member of the colony on Foal Island. He and the small group of mostly misfit writers in residence there live, work, snipe, and from time to time apparently try to kill themselves. They're seeking a kind of creative liberation, not death, though sometimes the line between the two is blurred. Mary arrives lacking in much life experience but already seeming rather grounded and self-possessed. Nathan bungles his first impression on her and subsequently stalls on revealing to her that he is her father. He's hardly an ideal father figure: he confuses his obsessiveness with his genuine love (in which he's not utterly lacking) and he is oblivious to his often controlling nature. He and Mary develop a successful, if frequently strained, relationship as mentor and protegee, and over time Mary becomes increasingly poised for actual literary success. But will Nathan ever simply tell Mary the truth? His self-loathing and general social ineptitude lead him into decisions that will only make his task harder, and often result in darkly comic episodes (as in the encounter with the island's resident nymphomaniac.)

I enjoyed this book, though it sometimes conveyed the impression of being two or three books at once. Kennedy's sensibility is somewhat odd, which isn't a problem on its own, but my engagement with it waxed and waned. Some of the black humor was wonderful, and the swearing (particularly by the alcoholic editor) bordered on contagious. It made American cursing seem amateurish by comparison. However, the plot threads could have come together a little better. I left it feeling a little disappointed, but still thinking and rethinking my overall impression.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I add here a second book from the much-acclaimed Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy. This novel, like Original Bliss (see below), exemplifies Kennedy’s trademark mixture of tenderness and something just this side of pornography. The plot is a bit too complicated to summarize briefly. Basically, Kennedy deals here with two themes: writers and the neuroses that both motivate and hinder (destroy?) them, and the relationship between fathers and daughters. The underlying premise of the second of these themes is a bit hard to swallow (a father was estranged from his daughter when she was very young and then establishes a close relationship with her much later without her knowing he is her father and this relationship lasts for years without her finding out the truth that everyone around her seems to know), it does allow Kennedy to explore the complexities of feelings that can exist between a father and a daughter, particularly when the daughter is the very image of a lost and much-loved wife. There is considerable warmth and passion in this story although the novel's obsession with writers and their traumas could be viewed as a bit too much navel gazing--but writers DO like to stare at their own navels! In the final analysis, though, I must raise an issue here that will surely get me excommunicated from any fellowship of serious readers. This book is 550 pages long, requiring a slow reader like me around fifteen hours to complete. Let’s arbitrarily say that this book brought me ten “enjoyment points.” That would be .67 points per hour. Now let's assume that a smaller book took me eight hours to complete and brought only six points. That would be .75 points per hour. Which would be the best investment of my readerly time? I can hear the protests, “How crude! Importing a productivity model into something as sacred as reading!” Well, damn it, I’m in Singapore as I write this and everything here is about productivity. How could the spirit of this place not infect me? My final judgment remains that this book is just too large and contains a fair number of unnecessary pages. Maybe Kennedy would justify the latter by saying that obsessions, such as preoccupy the central character in this book, need to be repeated over and over again for the sake of verisimilitude. Maybe, but “at my back I always hear times winged chariot drawing near.”

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I'm not very good at reviews, so I'll just write down the things I love about it. First of all, I love the way it's written. Kennedy has a unique writing style that I've never experienced before. The words flow very smoothly and very naturally. It almost seemed to me that this style is reflecting the atmosphere of the island - a calm, monotonic atmosphere that is keeping the secrets of its inhabitants. It was very easy to read and none of the 500 pages felt forced or boring. I could read 500 or even more pages of this story. Secondly, I love the surrealism that is yet very realistic. Let's agree, some of the scenes are quite disturbing and macabre and some of the situations seem far-fetched. However, this is exactly what makes them realistic, because as we all know, truth can be stranger than fiction ;). Thirdly, this is a beautiful story overall. It's not all sunshine and butterflies, but it still is a happy story. This book shows life as it is: not just black, not just white, but extremely colorful, with death and separations of beloved ones, with the achieving of one's dreams, with bizarre out-of-this-world situations. And in the end, there is no end. The story goes on beyond the last page. Overall, I think this novel just celebrates life and that's what I love most about it.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fledgling writer Mary Lamb joins Nathan Staples and other writers at a remote writers colony. Unbeknownst to Mary (and only Mary) Nathan is her estranged father who is still wildly in love, after decades apart, w/ Mary's mother. The original writer's colony members have a pact w/ death - if they escape death seven times, they find fulfillment, and the actual escape reconfirms that life is still beautiful.

Kennedy is an excellent writer, but this effort was too long. The writers continue to attempt to die (or avoid death?), and Nathan continues to struggle w/ his relationship w/ Mary. However, the beautiful characterization and imagery and Kennedy's ability to surprise long into a story make this a worthwhile effort.

[Terry Pearce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would've liked to read this without the italic internal thought... it often seemed too much, like hammering home points her prose and her story was doing well enough anyway. The characters and the basic story were well done, though, even if there could have been a bit less untimely-death-based drama -- the most compelling stuff was the stuff that had to do with the timely deaths and the lives of the characters. I think this might have been a four-star book if had been edited down to a little over half its length.

[Arukiyomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one really got me. Maybe it was because I was also reading the abonimable In Search of Klingsor at the time, a novel that would make any other author appear talented.

Nathan is a writer with a past living on a remote Welsh island only reachable by boat and only peopled by his literate peers. His past starts to catch up with him though when aspiring writer Mary Lamb appears, his estranged daughter.

This leads to a game of cat and mouse as Nathan, fully aware of his fatherhood, makes his way closer and closer to the daughter his guilt won’t let him confess to.

It’s a moving story that is very well written if a little drawn out. If you find it a bit slow going at first, persevere with it. Kennedy has a real knack of portraying the inner emotions of her characters. You develop a deep sympathy for Nathan and can’t help but feel for him as a fellow insider to the trauma wrenching his heart around.

The writing is mesmeric at times. I had glimpses of The Sea, The Sea and The Unconsoled throughout which was a very comforting experience. For this alone I’d recommend it, but with the addition of a moving family drama, this is a novel that will reach many hearts.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about a very messed-up novelist, Nathan Staples, who has his estranged and unknowing daughter invited to live on the writer’s retreat island off the coast of Wales where he also lives, so that he can coach her in her own writing ambitions. Probably the most manipulative thing I have ever known a main character to do, and at first I despised him for it, but I did get to pity him, at least, as the novel went on. The question is whether the ends justify the means.

It shows writers as a heartless bunch. The way Bryn is abandoned is truly horrible. And the ending is kind of annoying, although I can see the point is that this is a book about a process – Joe’s point that life is a way, a path, with no arrival. (I couldn’t get a handle on Joe – he didn’t seem like a real person to me.) So that’s several negative points, yet I did really enjoy it. It’s a long book, but it needs that time for the slowly shifting perspectives of the characters.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this blind and was rewarded beyond any reasonable expectations. A suberbly dramatic opening through the eyes of suicidal author Nathan Staples, through 500 pages of slow-burn begging him to tell the budding teenage writer Mary Lamb that he is indeed her father, estranged from her and the mother whom he still adores, for about 15 years. Nathan is Mary's mentor on an island which is a writers' retreat, populated by a cast of variously damaged individuals. The characters not tortured by the muse - Mary's gay surrogate parents Bryn and Morgan, and Nathan's sex obsessed alcoholic agent, bring real world light relief as does Eckless the dog, into what otherwise would be a fairly painful read.

[Dead John Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave up midway. I don't normally give up midday but I'm up to around page 250 odd add I can't stomach the thought of another 250 odd pages.

I liked the beginning but with the two uncles, now that could have been an interesting book from there, but the main theme of the relationship between the girl and her, as yet unknown father, was turgid and tedious.

I did like the writing though, it has style and grace where the content has neither. If you can imagine an unsuccessful Richard Osman writing a bad novel, this is it.

[Simon Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's so much going on in this novel. A beautiful use of language, some shocking scenes, some funny scenes, an intriguing plot, entertaining sub plots. It's a great, epic yarn. Thoroughly enjoyable.

[Mark Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this! Wry, wise and compassionate. Entertainingly plotted. Every sentence beautifully written. Kennedy drops wonderful, surprising turns of phase here and there almost carelessly... Just read it.

[Caitlin Fraser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime

[Manicus · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a real person in sight!

[Sheridan]

Complex confusing complicated. C'est la vie.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in September 2000.

Everything in this long, complicated novel really boils down to two themes: the relationship between parent and child, and what it is like to be a writer. It is mostly set on a remote island off the coast of Wales which is home to a community of writers. One of them, horror novelist Nathan Staples, has not seen his daughter Mary for about twenty years, since his wife Maura walked out taking the child with her. He has now tracked Mary down and discovered that she too has ambitions to write (no indication is given as to how he has managed to do this). Maura had not wanted to raise Mary herself, and so she has been brought up by her "uncles", a gay couple one of whom is related to Maura. Nathan arranges for Mary to be offered a scholarship, a change to live on the island for a year and learn from the experienced writers in the community.

Mary doesn't know who her father is - and Maura has in fact told her that he is dead - so that she doesn't connect Nathan with herself at all, accepting the scholarship at its face value. (Presumably their surnames are different, though Kennedy doesn't say so.) Nathan intends to tell her, but naturally finds it difficult to do so, particularly as he finds her sexually attractive (mainly because of her resemblance to her mother). His agonising is the main way in which Kennedy explores her themes.

Everything You Need is well written, though distinctly repulsive in places. (The very first page is an example of this.) It is a bit on the slow side, and much of what Kennedy has to say (both about relationships and about writing) is rather obvious. The characters are interesting, though as they are mainly viewed through Nathan's self obsession they are not profoundly three dimensional. A good novel, not a great one.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Nathan, I know you and I know what you're like, but there must be limits to even your maudlin self-obsession. Don't roll your eyes, it'll hurt you."

The aforementioned line taken from the last few pages summarizes how I felt about the main character and the author; what neuroses could Kennedy have that she could continue over and over and over again about the main character and his inability to move on?! By the end I wanted Nathan Staples to succeed at his suicide attempts! That aside I did give the book four stars because it's beautifully written and, though the main character was tedious, I just couldn't put the book down.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. Beautiful, poetic, and heartbreaking. Everything You Need is set on a remote Welsh island which is home for a small colony of writers. At 18 years old, Mary Lamb goes to join them, and as her short life becomes intertwined with everyone there, it becomes apparent that not everyone is as they seem. The narrative style is fun, with the story told in normal type and the character's thoughts in italics, a practise even extended to the dog. This is the most human and heart wrenching book from the list I've read in a while, and I don't want to give anymore of the story away, but it's worth every second.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of her longest books, and one of her darkest with lots of people suffering physical and mental trauma, although almost all of that trauma Is either literally self-inflicted by the individual charaters, or at least voluntarily sought after by them. However it is not all voluntary, the book also throws in a murdered child and SPOILERS two of the three nicest people in the book are also suddenly killed off by natural causes. Two other innocents have, what one can best describe without the spoiling the plot as, harrowing moments.

A depressing read but a great one though if you were considering embarking on a career as a writer, or even an editor, this might just put you off for life….

[Nathan Yates Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. While A.L. Kennedy's writing style takes some getting used to (there are moments of backwards narrative where you feel lost until things are slowly revealed - I found this a little annoying at times), the story is engaging and the characters are interesting. You come to care about them quite a bit over the years (yes, years - the book unfolds over the span of 4 or 5 years). There were times I was genuinely teary-eyed. I felt the book peaked about 80 pages before the end, but the thoughtful ending did leave me feeling satisfied.