Serious Sweet

Her flair for describing feelings and relationships makes this an engaging window into the messy minds of Londoners and her commentary on the city rings true. -- Susannah Butter * Evening Standard * A genuinely stirring love story. * Mail on Sunday * This is a bold, cinematic novel... Parts of it are terrifically funny. * Herald * A. L. Kennedy's eighth novel is a profoundly moving, often funny, and at points rending depiction of two good people. Serious Sweet is about the heroism of decency; albeit damaged decency... Kennedy is not one of our finest writers simply because of the quality of her prose: she is because of the moral profundity of her work. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman * Deeply affecting... Kennedy strips her characters emotionally bare... Serious Sweet portrays intense lives of quiet desperation: it is a novel about hope and muted courage and, at the end of the day, a very tentatively experienced optimism. -- Hannah Beckerman * Observer * A. L. Kennedy shakes her city until the right atoms collide. She stands back to give a picture of the whole of London on one day, and then suddenly swoops down to pick up a tiny detail. -- Kate Saunders * The Times * In equal measures, funny, sad and addictive... The opening pages had me holding my breath in fear and anticipation... Capturing the relentless hustle of London life to perfection. -- Glenda Marchant * Stylist * Serious Sweet is a magnificent novel, showing Kennedy at the very top of her game. Ambitious in scope, daring in execution, full of dazzling apercus and dark comedy... It is a tale of redemption, as serious and as sweet as you could wish for. -- Rebecca Abrams * Financial Times * So beautiful that it makes your head hurt. -- Katy Guest * Independent * Kennedy tenderly anatomised London and loneliness in Serious Sweet. -- Ali Smith * Guardian, Book of the Year *