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Review
`Always a bold writer, she observes the world with a refreshingly skewed intelligence, and her well-known darkness, sometimes verging on morbidity, is always leavened with wit and humour. She also writes beautifully.' --The Guardian
`Kennedy is a fine stylist and single passages are exquisite.' --The Financial Times
`This is a masterful novel, imaginatively crafted, shaped by big, precisely articulated emotion.' --The Times, Saturday Review
`Kennedy's sixth novel might move by turns through mystery, love story and comedy of shipboard manners, but its central subject is the transgressive, near-sexual pleasure of passing off fiction as fact.' --New Statesman
Alex Clark: `as impressively ingenious as a fairground house of mirrors ... dramatic, exciting and unpredictable... It sails through the Big Novel Test in that it stays in the mind long after it has been laid down. And there is a powerful magic in that'.
--TLS
`a complex, challenging novel... there's strong language throughout. At times the tone is chill and distancing but it edges gradually towards a final satisfying sense of empathy and resolution.'
--Daily Express
`an impressive novel' --Daily Telegraph
'If you like Kennedy's work, with its cool wit, spare stylishness, sharp sense of place and world-worn tenderness, then you'll find all those attributes here'
--Independent on Sunday
`AL Kennedy is almost unique among British novelists for her ability to write fiction that is at once challengingly experimental, luminously beautiful and utterly readable. It helps that she is fiercely observant and very funny...If you want a guide to the rough contradictions of the heart, AL Kennedy is your woman' --Evening Standard
`It displays all the verbal artistry and emotional force of its predecessor, burrowing deep into the minds of its intense central characters' --Daily Mail
`offers the pleasures of a work in which form and content dovetail with extraordinary skill, and in which narrative tricks are utilised to enlarge on the theme of deception rather than for the sake of tricksiness itself' --Sunday Times Magazine
`Structured as a compelling riddle...the marvel lies in how far one person can see into another' --New Statesman
`the more mysterious elements of the novel's structure...make the book a giddy pleasure' --Literary Review
`Kennedy is a fine stylist and single passages are exquisite.' --The Financial Times
`This is a masterful novel, imaginatively crafted, shaped by big, precisely articulated emotion.' --The Times, Saturday Review
`Kennedy's sixth novel might move by turns through mystery, love story and comedy of shipboard manners, but its central subject is the transgressive, near-sexual pleasure of passing off fiction as fact.' --New Statesman
Alex Clark: `as impressively ingenious as a fairground house of mirrors ... dramatic, exciting and unpredictable... It sails through the Big Novel Test in that it stays in the mind long after it has been laid down. And there is a powerful magic in that'.
--TLS
`a complex, challenging novel... there's strong language throughout. At times the tone is chill and distancing but it edges gradually towards a final satisfying sense of empathy and resolution.'
--Daily Express
`an impressive novel' --Daily Telegraph
'If you like Kennedy's work, with its cool wit, spare stylishness, sharp sense of place and world-worn tenderness, then you'll find all those attributes here'
--Independent on Sunday
`AL Kennedy is almost unique among British novelists for her ability to write fiction that is at once challengingly experimental, luminously beautiful and utterly readable. It helps that she is fiercely observant and very funny...If you want a guide to the rough contradictions of the heart, AL Kennedy is your woman' --Evening Standard
`It displays all the verbal artistry and emotional force of its predecessor, burrowing deep into the minds of its intense central characters' --Daily Mail
`offers the pleasures of a work in which form and content dovetail with extraordinary skill, and in which narrative tricks are utilised to enlarge on the theme of deception rather than for the sake of tricksiness itself' --Sunday Times Magazine
`Structured as a compelling riddle...the marvel lies in how far one person can see into another' --New Statesman
`the more mysterious elements of the novel's structure...make the book a giddy pleasure' --Literary Review
Book Description
An extraordinary novel of love, loss and the act of deception
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
moving, fascinating and compelling read once you pass the initial stream of conciousness
26 Nov 2011
Format:Hardcover
For anyone thinking of giving up near the beginning, as a number of reviewers here have said, don't, persist and you will be rewarded.
I almost put it down somewhere around the 30-50 page mark where there's a long dense stream of conciousness, I persisted through this mainly due to the tantalising opening section where the book talks to you and /reads you/ rather than vice versa. It then opens into a multi-layered set of revelation with the whole coming together with a moving, clever and ironic ending that solidly ties the whole of the book together. I'd like to comment and discuss the ending more but it would be a dreadful spoiler.
If anyone can give any detailed insight into the the specific meaning of page numbering in the body of the book I'd be interested to hear.
Also mine was a library copy, I was supposedly the first reader but a number of the pages were dog eared, which made me wonder if this was another trick in the printing of this fine physical volume.
Was my first A.L.Kennedy, I'll be reading out more.
I almost put it down somewhere around the 30-50 page mark where there's a long dense stream of conciousness, I persisted through this mainly due to the tantalising opening section where the book talks to you and /reads you/ rather than vice versa. It then opens into a multi-layered set of revelation with the whole coming together with a moving, clever and ironic ending that solidly ties the whole of the book together. I'd like to comment and discuss the ending more but it would be a dreadful spoiler.
If anyone can give any detailed insight into the the specific meaning of page numbering in the body of the book I'd be interested to hear.
Also mine was a library copy, I was supposedly the first reader but a number of the pages were dog eared, which made me wonder if this was another trick in the printing of this fine physical volume.
Was my first A.L.Kennedy, I'll be reading out more.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
A.L. Kennedy has already gained quite a following with her previous novels. The Blue Book will certainly not disappoint.
Set on a cruise ship, but filmically moving from past to present, The Blue Book is a complex novel which sets out to explore the nature of our relationships. The device of the ship serves to isolate the central three characters, Beth, our narrator, Derek, her remote partner, and Arthur, a Jungian figure from her past. The triangle thus created is haunted by a missing figure whose influence permeates the novel but is only fully present in the end.
A.L. Kennedy commands a spare prose style and skilfully uncovers the implicit deceits and lies that are central to the way we establish relationships. So why only 4 stars? As often with this gifted writer, it is hard to form a bond with any of her main characters. This is a deliberate authorial ploy: but it does make the novel sometimes a taxing read.
Despite the slight reservation above, this is an interesting novel that bears rereading: and I recommend it warmly.
Set on a cruise ship, but filmically moving from past to present, The Blue Book is a complex novel which sets out to explore the nature of our relationships. The device of the ship serves to isolate the central three characters, Beth, our narrator, Derek, her remote partner, and Arthur, a Jungian figure from her past. The triangle thus created is haunted by a missing figure whose influence permeates the novel but is only fully present in the end.
A.L. Kennedy commands a spare prose style and skilfully uncovers the implicit deceits and lies that are central to the way we establish relationships. So why only 4 stars? As often with this gifted writer, it is hard to form a bond with any of her main characters. This is a deliberate authorial ploy: but it does make the novel sometimes a taxing read.
Despite the slight reservation above, this is an interesting novel that bears rereading: and I recommend it warmly.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Like some of the other reviewers here, I gave up on this book, something which I very rarely do, around page 130 ... but then I returned to it, determined not to let it beat me! I wonder why the first 130 pages or so are so difficult and dense and uninviting, because the remainder of the book, for me, at least, proved to be much more readable.
However, I still found it very lacking overall and can only give it two stars. The very heavy use of italics, capitals and even bold italics (which in the Bembo typeface used in the hardback edition are very bold indeed), is jarring to the eye. Some authors (Nicola Barker included) may think it clever to break typographical conventions, but there is a good reason why those conventions exist!
As others have pointed out, the characters are not particularly likeable; in fact I didn't feel we even got to know them much, despite some of Arthur and Beth's 'back story' emerging right towards the end. For me this made it hard to engage with the story.
Either it is going way over my head, or the tricks and codes in the book, as described in the publisher's blurb and by other reviewers, are massively exaggerated. True, there is a simple code mapping numbers to words which is exposed about halfway, and reappears at the end, and there are some strange page numbers which appear at the tops of pages (while the correct numbers appear at the bottom), but is there really some clever game-playing going on between the book and its reader? If so, I missed it.
Like one or two other reviewers here, I really wanted to like this beautifully presented and ostensibly mysterious book. I have a lot of time for A. L. Kennedy as a critic and social commentator, and she was hugely entertaining at the 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival, but I am coming to the conclusion that she is more entertaining as a personality than she is readable as a novelist -- very much like Will Self in that regard.
However, I still found it very lacking overall and can only give it two stars. The very heavy use of italics, capitals and even bold italics (which in the Bembo typeface used in the hardback edition are very bold indeed), is jarring to the eye. Some authors (Nicola Barker included) may think it clever to break typographical conventions, but there is a good reason why those conventions exist!
As others have pointed out, the characters are not particularly likeable; in fact I didn't feel we even got to know them much, despite some of Arthur and Beth's 'back story' emerging right towards the end. For me this made it hard to engage with the story.
Either it is going way over my head, or the tricks and codes in the book, as described in the publisher's blurb and by other reviewers, are massively exaggerated. True, there is a simple code mapping numbers to words which is exposed about halfway, and reappears at the end, and there are some strange page numbers which appear at the tops of pages (while the correct numbers appear at the bottom), but is there really some clever game-playing going on between the book and its reader? If so, I missed it.
Like one or two other reviewers here, I really wanted to like this beautifully presented and ostensibly mysterious book. I have a lot of time for A. L. Kennedy as a critic and social commentator, and she was hugely entertaining at the 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival, but I am coming to the conclusion that she is more entertaining as a personality than she is readable as a novelist -- very much like Will Self in that regard.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
When page number errors are more than they seem
It's hard to say much about this book without giving away key mechanisms about not just the plot, but also how the book is constructed - which as you will see if you read this... Read more
Published 1 month ago by P. J. Dunn
I tried to love his book but I coudln't
I was really looking forward to reading this, I've not read any A L Kennedy before but have always found her an interesting commentator so was expecting to enjoy the book. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Pardo
I will be honest: I could not finish it
I am not easily intimidated by post-modern novels, and The Blue Book appealed because of the fake mediums story. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Esofagus
This is your blue book
Some books are wonderful, but uncomfortable reading. This is one of them.
The Blue Book is ostensibly the story of Elizabeth, a woman who is on a cruise with her... Read more
The Blue Book is ostensibly the story of Elizabeth, a woman who is on a cruise with her... Read more
Published 5 months ago by J. Charlesworth
Challenging and often funny post modern novel
If terms like "post modern novel" send shivers down your spine, then AL Kennedy's "The Blue Book" won't be for you. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Ripple
Honestly? Pretentious and depressing
I had heard about A L Kennedy and what a great writer she is and thought its about time i tried one of her books. Read more
Published 7 months ago by JennyD
Unreadable
As usual with the writing of A.L.Kennedy, it is unreadable. Along with her compatriot Ali Smith, Kennedy seems to be the darling of the literary establishment but not the general... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Diana Foster
Slow Burner
When Elizabeth embarks on a cruise with her partner, Derek, they encounter a man whom the reader imagines to be an eccentric stranger. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Tamara L
A highly accomplished novel full of mystery mystification
If reading is supposed to be a pleasure, then A L Kennedy's The Blue Book certainly did what it was supposed to do. Read more
Published 8 months ago by A Common Reader
Great literature or...?
Not a book for relaxing into.
Art mimicking life mimicking Art? (Pun intended!)
Suffering for Art's sake or just suffering for suffering's sake? Read more
Art mimicking life mimicking Art? (Pun intended!)
Suffering for Art's sake or just suffering for suffering's sake? Read more
Published 8 months ago by Cheery
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