- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; New edition edition (Jan 27 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0099730715
- ISBN-13: 978-0099730712
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 2.2 x 19.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #862,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Only a writer of rare talent could take an abused housewife and a pornography addict and weave around them a terrifically tender love story. A.L. Kennedy starts her extraordinary novel in Glasgow, Scotland, where Helen Brindle leads a life of quiet despair. Mrs. Brindle has lost her "original bliss," her ability to pray and to have her prayers answered. "She found she had lost the power of reaching out. Now and again she could force up what felt like a shout, but then know it had fallen back against her face. Finally the phrases she attempted dwindled until they were only a background mumbling mashed in with the timeless times she had asked for help." Enter Edward E. Gluck, an expert in cybernetics, whom Helen hears first on the television and then on radio. Dr. Gluck seems so effortlessly self-confident, so sure of himself that on impulse she arranges a trip to Stuttgart where he is participating in a conference, hoping that he can give her the answers she's looking for.
After an uncomfortable first meeting, Helen and Edward soon discover themselves to be kindred spirits. For if she has lost the ability to reach out, he never had it; pornography is his substitute for human connections: "The books, the magazines, I could use them according to my schedule, they seemed perfectly convenient and unshameful. Naturally, at that point I didn't quite realize I'd end up having private carrier's lorries arriving to dump shifty, plain, brown packages, addressed for only me, at every house and research establishment I would ever be associated with." Kennedy works a miracle here, creating in Edward a character with creepy proclivities who is, nonetheless, utterly lovable. And when these two damaged people finally rediscover their bliss in each other, nothing could seem more right or more natural. --Alix Wilber
From Publishers Weekly
The prose in Glasgow writer Kennedy's wrenching first U.S. publication both mesmerizes with its musicality and startles with the frankness of its sexual detail. Glasgow matron Helen Brindle's search for someone "who would tell her what was wrong and how to right it" bats her back and forth between an abusive husband and Edward E. Gluck, a sex-obsessed self-help guru whom she first sees on a late-night TV program about masturbation. When Helen flies to Stuttgart where Gluck is lecturing on his patented "Process" for self-improvement, romance blossoms between them. But Helen's discovery of Gluck's weakness for a particularly repulsive form of pornography spooks her into returning to Mr. Brindle. In her terrifying world, pious Helen has only God to hold on to through bouts of stomach-turning abuse and compromised love. As Kennedy charts Helen's course and her flights from Brindle to Gluck and back again, the narrative is relentless and often grim. Relief comes to the reader at the story's end, when Helen's intense religous faith is justified. Not for the faint of heart, or for those made wary by liberal use of the G-word, this novel manages to address its characters' deep pathos brazenly, and without apology. (Jan.) FYI: Kennedy was named as one of the 20 best new British writers by Granta in 1993.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A stark, edgy and arresting piece of work by Kennedy,
By A Customer
This review is from: Original Bliss (Paperback)
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.
2.0 out of 5 stars
pointless,
By fran herd (Geneva,NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Original Bliss (Paperback)
This book contains very little meaningful interaction, a transparent plot and useless conversations. What's the point?I dont think there is one.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Original Bliss (Paperback)
Interesting book with original content. Not a bad read. The book keeps one interested.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
