Was Wird: Erzählungen

by A.L. Kennedy

Twice selected for Granta ’s list of Best Young British Novelists, winner of the 2007 Costa Award for her acclaimed novel Day (“ Day is a novel of extraordinary complexity”— The New York Review of Books ), which was chosen as one of New York magazine’s top-ten books of the year—the internationally revered A. L. Kennedy returns with a story collection whose glorious wit and vitality make this a not-to-be-missed addition to the canon of one of our most formidable young writers.No one captures the spirit of our times like A. L. Kennedy, with her dark humor, poignant hopefulness, and brilliant evocation of contemporary social and spiritual malaise. In the title story, a man abandons his indifferent wife and wanders into a small-town movie theater where he finds himself just as invisible as he was at home. In the masterfully comic “Saturday Teatime,” a woman trying to relax in a flotation tank is hijacked by memories of her past. In “Whole Family with Young Children Devastated,” a woman, inadvertently drawn into a stranger’s marital dysfunction, meditates on the failings of modern life as seen through late-night television and early-morning walks.Devastating and funny, intimate and profound, the stories in What Becomes are further proof that Kennedy is one of the most dazzling and inventive writers of her generation.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Scotland, 21st Century

Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

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

[Karen· · Rating 5 out of 5]

..... of the broken hearted? Who had love that's now departed. And that is the theme of A.L. Kennedy's latest collection of short stories. Bleak, perhaps. But then you don't read A.L. Kennedy unless you can take her unflinching, precise, unsettling, razor sharp dissection of the pain that makes us human. This is not the sort of writing to sink into like a comfy old sofa, it is more like skeetering across ice, never quite knowing when you'll be plunged into the freezing abyss below, it's writing that leaves you faintly breathless and wondrous at what words on a printed page can do, and heart-stoppingly exhilarated when there's a sudden swoop of humour amongst the dark. Incomparable.

[Nan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful stories that have darkness lurking around the edges. Kennedy gives you little clues throughout that build up to quiet but sharp intakes of breath. These are small mysteries, just without the tropes. She's incredibly versatile; "Sympathy" is written entirely as dialogue, and somehow manages to be more erotic than the entire "erotic memoir" I just read. The title story is a stunner. But honestly, every story in the book is great in its own way. She's a rare writer with a distinctive voice that never becomes predictable.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly texturized inner monologues are the feature of these short stories. The author makes sharp-edged observations and asks stark questions of us:

What is the color of failure?


There is noise beneath the silence, and it's always moving, never still. 


We are all tragedies waiting to happen.


Do a multitude of tiny bad judgments equal a lifetime of being careless?


Do we need physical manifestations of our internal turmoil, to prove that our torment is real?

The stories are not entirely even, but the best of them hit their marks with startling precision.

[Chris Waterford · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are very uneven---5 x 5 star stories and 5 x 1 star stories. There are elements (words, phrases) of good writing in these stories but the narrative thread has mostly gone missing. The theme or focus of the tale often suddenly changes which was disconcerting for this reader. I especially liked one story "Edinburgh".
6.5/10

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Proximal phalanx, left ring finger, a gash that almost woke the bone" (7).
"Frank decided that he would like to be both demanding and unreasonable. If he wasn't the man he had been, then surely he ought to be able to pick the man he would be" (12).
“It’s the thought that counts.
“But people like thoughts demonstrated” (40).
“I wasn’t entirely stupid. Only happy.
“Which is beyond stupidity, beyond any capacity for thought” (44).
“ ‘We are not all connected. We are bags of skin. We are all separate bags of thinking skin’” (51). *That one gave me pause.
“I did foresee the absence of distraction will leave me alone with me, which isn’t always wise, but I’ve done what seemed necessary, sensible…” (56).
“But let’s be frank, a lousy choice of a pet. Hamsters are almost impossible to love. They have the brains of a wind-up toy, or possibly a potato” (60).
“More likely to find a sea lion in the hummus” (61).
“It’s partly self-obsession—disgusting—I only care about the blind because they’re me” (76).
“…not looking for anything except themselves, the good parts of themselves hidden in each other” (79).
“She has taken off her coat and is comfortable and wishes to Christ that Tom didn’t make an opera out of everything” (80).
“At least when you fuck up at home you’re still at home” (81).
“Salt and fat and bulk and starch to imitate contentment, fill you up” (81).
“This meal he finds ludicrously moving, perhaps enraging, too. It’s set out like a series of gifts, special delicacies nestling in lacquered boxes, as if someone back behind that curtain is fond of them, wants them to thrive” (81-82).
“…excellent rooftop view, the wild shapes the city hides up against the sky: bell towers, temples, pinnacles, farmhouse verandas, nunnery gardens, buttresses and battlements: the fantasies that money conjures and maintains” (87).
“I had no memory of reaching for the phone, which meant that had happened while I was unconscious. I was already aware that, like many people, I can perform complex series of actions without myself. This is handy” (91-92).
“They will be the kind of parents who explain things and by doing this will helplessly imply that every single one of the people their children see, play with, talk to, love, may leave them without notice eternally and the truth is that huge and harmful forces stalk reality unopposed and meanwhile something shadowed and appalling many have happened to their dog, their big lovable dog with the tender muzzle and the patient eyes” (98-99).
“…no, at my end, the rest of the pantomime rolling on beyond me when I stop—at the end of me I will join them, the mysterious or the rotting dead, and I am not even remotely in favour of that, but also try to never indulge such thinking unless I am overtired and lack the speed to slip out of its way. I don’t want my existence to seem impractical, absurd and particularly not beyond salvation. Plus, I can’t deal properly with others when all I feel is sorry they’ll be leaving fairly soon and sad that so many unimportant things are so distracting.
“And, then again, distraction is often exactly what I need” (99).
“…a long skirt so tight it almost stops her walking, only this isn’t good because she has no arse, no pleasantness to see” (116).
“He’d be a really useless mugger, though—a lover, not a fighter: young Simon—well, a wanker, not a fighter” (200).
“…eight people, counting himself, which he does, because he’s people…” (203).
*Obviously I enjoyed many good lines from this book. There were several good stories, some duds, and I was particularly impressed with "Edinburgh" and "As God Made Us."

[Esther · Rating 2 out of 5]

My Mum gave me this for one of my birthdays a while back and it joined my ever growing selection of 'books to read'. When visiting me recently, Mum was browsing my bookshelves (its practically the first thing she does before even unpacking, its how we reconnect with each other) and she saw this and asked me if I'd read it yet. Not yet. She replied 'Hmm its not very good, really not very good at all'. Ok well cheers then Mum for the great gift.

And then this immediately bumped it up the list and I was stubbornly praying that I'd like it and prove her wrong. But no. My mother is wrong about a lot of things, but her taste in literature is not one of them. This is a collection of short stories, most woefully oblique and with that trying- too-hard creative writing class whiff about them. I've not read any AL Kennedy before and she is very highly rated, but perhaps more so for her long form novels. Now who shall I regift this to?

[A.K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Words that are not apt descriptors of this book: glorious, extraordinary, razor-sharp, insightful, brilliant, dazzling, inventive. Inventive, maybe, if before reading this you have read trade paperbacks exclusively. Realism as a literary shtick (and it is a shtick, please and thank you, the shtick of no-style is a big sticky shtick) is so often so painfully limited re: reality. Unless you happen to truly be glorious, extraordinary, razor-sharp, insightful, brilliant, dazzling and inventive, AKA Amy Hempel. Otherwise? Bored now. It's not that these stories are even extraordinarily shit, it's just that I can't be gotten to give a shit. And books are like my shit, you know?

[Sara Aye Moung · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this as it was on a pre-reading list for a creative writing course. Objectively I can admire the prose and writing but I have always struggled with the short story format. And these stories are bleak. So if you enjoy short stories then this is for you but afraid not for me

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Move along now people. Move along. Nothing to see here. Just keep moving, now. Nothing to see. Move along now.

[Carlton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good stories, especially "As God made us" about war veterans, and there was some humour, but overall too depressing to be engaging,

[Katelyn Holliday · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best stories:

What Becomes - haunting

Edinburgh - brutal
“The same words that were in her mind, now in yours, still warm”

Another - honest
“There being no reason why not that she could find, she spent the following afternoon with her computer in a dimmer and dimmer living room as the day surrendered into a pewter sheen and then left her and she watched a man plainly demonstrate that being alive was something not everyone did well, or even adequately.”
“Richard had the knack of visibly racing to meet with the best of himself: no caution, no reserve, no need to please - he made himself an indisputable fact.”

[Tom Mudge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of zany, interesting and prosaic stories. I really loved the way she described the humanity of each character – even if they were majorly flawed, there was still some understanding and sympathy to be had for them.

All in all, I felt that some stories ended a bit abruptly, but that’s a minor point. If you’re looking for interesting scenarios, dark humour and human writing, then this is an ideal collection for you.

[lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey there! I really liked your storytelling style it feels vivid and emotionally grounded. While reading, I couldn’t help imagining some scenes as visuals.
I’m a commission-based comic & webtoon artist, and if you’re ever interested in a commissioned visual version, I’d love to talk.
📩 Discord & Instagram: lizziedoesitall

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.L. Kennedy is an absolute gem in person, wickedly funny and she just can't stop talking. Funnily enough, her stories are not like that: they're very economical with words and very dark. I really don't want to go into the content, but experience the darkness of ordinary people yourself...4 stars

[Siobhan Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.L. Kennedy never writes a cliched sentence. Her images, plots and characters jolt you awake. The believability of her tales make them twice as scary as anything by Irvine Welsh, truly dark.

[Angela Foster-Swailes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories got better as they went on but I didn’t find any of them very compelling

[Shawnna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel mean about AL Kennedy, because I started her novel 'Day' last Christmas (2009) and wasn't really getting into it, though thought I might later, but one of my presents was 'Hard Rain Falling' and I wanted to read that and abandoned 'Day'. Then I lost it ('Day'), and still can't find it. I will read it.. meanwhile I'll read these stories.


I'm not sure why but it took me a while to get into this book, the first few stories (Saturday Teatime, Marriage) I read I appreciated for their dialogue and their odd slant at things (in the latter the man follows his wife to a building site, she weeps at the men working there, the blades bite home with a mineral squeal, 'I don't know how they stand it.') but couldn't really connect with the characters. However as I read on I picked up her style, the way she goes about things and began to enjoy them more. The next I read (I don't read in order) was the rude and sexy 'Sympathy' and the device of describing sexual acts through the dialogue does make you do some work, and you gradually learn this is a one night stand, or is it a husband and wife acting out a one night stand, no you were right the first time. And other stories got their claws in me, the man who goes to see a magician, intending to take a girl he likes but she turns him down and he gives his ticket to a fan who after persuades him to wait outside for the 'Great Man' and he stays there at the back of the theatre with a bunch of hangers-on, a sad little community and tries to chat up a girl who doesn't really have much interest in him; the similar title story about a slapped and rejected man who goes to the cinema, only to find he is the only customer and the film is run without sound, accidently. And who could resist writing of this quality:
At the heel end of the beach everything is scoured, flat: ghosts of dust are writhing and flaring across it at ankle height. Pebbles, sticks, shells, they balance on their own little towers of the sand they've shielded, everything else rushed to nowhere. The sun has turned unnatural, as if it's a hole punched through to somewhere white, and its finally sinking for today, angling lower and lower until shadows are cast from almost nothing, the sand towers and fragments gaining substance, depth, beginning to look architectural, like the ruins of a city far away, miles below, deserted.

Or this, the wife of a famous radio star, a reader of his own children's stories, now dead, listens to a recording of his work by someone slated to take his place - she has been sent the recording for approval - while she irons:

Sitting down - couldn't remember dropping to a chair, but she must have done - sitting down and hearing a type of unnecessary beauty being threaded into something of her past - the iron, meanwhile, ignored and tinging, breathing steam - not a chance of her doing anything but listening until the talking had stopped.

[Leon · Rating 5 out of 5]

After Indelible Acts, Kennedy’s collection from 2002 and her first one, with that long title starting with Night Geometry, this new one, What Becomes, continues her inimical style of writing. She doesn’t subscribe to the type of writing which is taught in most writing schools or classes: simple, to the point, edited to the essentials only, almost to the bare essentials, no superfluous words - in short, very American.

No one could ever teach Kennedy’s style of writing, not even Kennedy herself. It is a style unto its own, very recognisable hers and hers alone. Kennedy, because of this, stands in the same league as another Brit writer, Ali Smith. What is so strange about this is : both of them are from Scotland. However, unlike other Scots writers they do not utilise Scot slang or patois; well, not that much.

In Kennedy’s stories in this collection she gets you into her characters’ heads with inner dialogue, which you’d come to recognise as they stand out in italics. Very unusual this, but perhaps as some kind of distancing from the character, she would sometimes use the second-person pronoun the way another writer would the third-person. I say unusual because this also brings the character’s thoughts and actions a litter closer; a contradiction, I know. She did this so well in her last novel Day.

But, not all the stories here are in this vein. One in which a man and woman talk between themselves prior to and when having some kind of sexual activity is the closest this dialogue-only style veers away from her norm. That piece, called Sympathy, can be deemed so intimate, so private, you the reader gets somewhat (yes, it can happen, to me, at least) embarrassed eavesdropping on them.

Then, at the end of the book, Kennedy gets back on track, back to her style, with most poignant story, about a man who has broken up with someone. Before the breakup he had bought them tickets to a magician’s show. Now, apart, he just wants to give away her part of the tickets to anyone who would take it, without paying him. He doesn’t want payment. Finally someone does take his offer, but he sits beside him in the theatre. Kennedy evokes the tension he feels while watching the show and while being aware of his talkative neighbour: quite the best writing for a short story I’ve ever come across.

Actually, quite all the stories achieve this kind of empathy from the reader. From the first story onwards, the title piece, What Becomes, you are inside the character’s world, listening to his inner thoughts and emotions, seeing what he sees, which is a cinema screen with no pictures yet, in an empty cine complex. The rest of the stories in the book are just as absorbing to read.

[Ernest Junius · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not sure I like it. The work is very reminiscing, in flow and style. I think of it more like a ramble. A collection of rambling with a series of really angry curses. The problem is I just don't care enough. Mostly the stories are about rusted married couples, husbands and wives in affairs, and broken family sort of stuff. People have been saying that the stories have sharp insights about them, has deep sentiments and snappy words. I don't know, I seriously can't bring myself to care.

I think of it, think and think again. Why is this award-winning author decorated with prizes don't have her claws on me. Maybe it's about the words.... the words I thought. The book is very generous in spending words, it's like shooting them off with an automatic machine gun; loads of italics and dashes; which all of them disturbs and breaks the flow of my reading. It's also a bit poetic somehow? In a way it is. But I don't understand poetry. There are few interesting stories of course, with the most interesting one is "Sympathy" where the story consists only dialogues between two person in bed, having sex, embellishing the story with cunt, whore, and cock. That is probably the only story that I could really read. Then I really tried again to read the rest seriously. Ah, in the end I couldn't stand it. I think I just skimmed most of them. I think they are just not my cup of tea.

[Anneliese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not typically a fan of short stories, and it usually takes me a long time to get through a collection of them (as is illustrated by the fact that I have been "currently reading" Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules for probably about a year now), but I read straight through this book of stories in a day. I started reading Kennedy's novel Day in February after I was being continually asked by a friend if I had read it yet--I put it down when I had to start doing lots of other reading for my classes, but was enjoying her writing nonetheless. When I saw this book in the store I thought I'd give it a shot since I liked her writing so much, and it would be something I could read a bit at a time. Clearly I was not disappointed, and failed in the task of leaving the rest of it for later. It opens with the story from which the collection gets its name, and it pulled me in from there. The short story "What Becomes" is one of the best short stories I have read; granted that number hasn't been high, but I've always found it difficult to be drawn in to a story in 10-20 pages, much less feel a sense of completion from one. A. L. Kennedy has succeeded in doing this for me, and I look forward to not only finishing Day, but reading her other works as well.

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.L. Kennedy is one of Scotland’s greatest contemporary writers who, over the last twenty years, has produced a body of work spanning novels, short stories, non-fiction, screenplays, and more. In recent years she’s been a regular feature in comedy clubs, something which polarised opinion at the start, and since 2007 her stock has risen with a string of prizes and awards, including the Best Book at the Costa Awards (for fifth novel, Day) and the Austrian State Prize for Literary Fiction, putting her amongst distinguished names like Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, and Milan Kundera, not to mention two recent British Nobel laureates.

Other than a few short stories from her first collection, I’ve read little of Kennedy, owing to an increasing preference for world literature over what’s on my doorstep. Recently I’ve felt the need to survey home soil writers, and so it is that I read What Becomes (2009), a new short story collection, her fifth to date.

Read my full review here.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are stark and hardly concern what one would typically think of as upbeat subjects (e.g., grief, obsessive thoughts, spouse abuse, and battle wounds and disabilities). But the language is so precise, so powerful that in only about 9 pages, Kennedy can effectively convey how a husband who beats his wife not only learns shame and remorse for his actions but comes to acknowledge the devastating effect that his repeated abuse has had on his wife. The language also never pulls its punches so you can feel the joy, the hope, the desparation to be normal, and the hurt conveyed in the joking exchange of the maimed young veterans who try to keep up their own and each other's spirits as they visit a local pool much to the vocal disgust of the "non-handicapped" patrons who frequent the pool and make it clear they would prefer the veterans and their injuries to remain out of sight and out of mind. These are all fine examples of good short stories.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a devotee of the short story form (I learned at the feet of St. Flannery O'Connor, after all), but in truth, I have a hard time tracking down contemporary story collections that really make an impact on me. Every story in this collection, though, left me deeply impressed. In a way, it's everything I had hoped the Deborah Eisenberg collection I recently finished might be-- a collection of stories about relationships (most of them unraveling-- violently so, in some instances) that captures, with rather astonishing precision, the nuances of language and human behavior, but is also boundlessly stylish; these stories are funny, creative, and utterly unique, but never clever just for the sake of being clever. And for all the emotional turmoil within them (believe me: some of them are devastating), I find that the spirit of this collection is ultimately very optimistic. Now: I want some more from this lady!

[Porkpie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the finest short story collections I've ever come across. A. L. Kennedy is the rarest of writers - someone with complete command of every facet of short fiction - finely-honed sentences, fully realized characters with their own voices, and enough skin in the game to make the stories jump.

The stories themselves range from laugh-out-loud humor to tremendously dark work, with the emphasis on the latter. There's a lot of damage in her work, of people using one another but not in a way that distances the reader or is gratuitous. Just unflinching and honest. We can still recognize ourselves in them, which somehow makes them darker still.

This book is easily one of the best things I'm likely to read this year and definitely an author that I will eventually read completely. The stories are absorbing to the last page.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange, beautiful collection. Imagine Dorothy Parker's dialogue-heavy short stories. Now make them even more chaotic, bewildering, depressing, and sardonic. If I could pick out one snippet of dialogue that seems emblematic of this whole book, I'd choose this exchange between two strangers from "Sympathy":

"I love you."
"No you don't."
"But I want to say I do."

These characters are all-too-aware of their neuroses, and they wrap clichés about them like raiment, hoping it'll make them appear normal.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book of short stories. Kennedy writes good one after good one; my favorite was "Another," I think. She is great at describing really surprising and often rather shocking situations but then making the emotions beneath the surface of those situations far more interesting than the situations themselves. Why am I not giving this book a 5-star rating? Hmmm. I guess it's because I never felt really knocked over by any one insight. Maybe that's not fair, but that's how I'm leaving it for now!

[James Haliburton]

Each snapshot of a life in this collection is prime Kennedy - the humour is black, first impressions are turned on their heads and the reader is left to fathom out exactly what s/he has just read. Short episodes are viewed through the microscope of her prose revealing everyday cruelties, disappointments and snatches of joy. Within a few short pages Kennedy's characters connect and intrigue. Like life itself these fragments are constantly surprising, loose ends are never tied up and no matter how damaged the life, the reader is left wanting to know more.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a disappointing first attempt at an ALK book (see review of So I Am Glad), this really changed my mind. Every short story gets right to the core of the subject, often making you squirm with discomfort as their interior monologues gradually reveal who they are, or are not. This really hit the mark for me; taut, spare sentences creating the beautifully disturbed worlds inside the heads of everyday people. Not always a comfortable read but ultimately rewarding.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think A.L. Kennedy is one of the best short story writers around and I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Though at times the characters and their situations are bleak (such is life?)her meaty stories are also full of dark humour. If you liked this - look out for her book "On Bullfighting", not fiction but a gripping look at a "sport" that has hypnotised authors of the past.