Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sacred love emerging from the profane: tenderly told!, April 1, 1999
By A Customer
I greatly admire what A.L. Kennedy accomplishes in her telling of "Original Bliss." She takes two characters, each ensnared by a different brand of loneliness which neither fully comprehends, and has them coming together to establish a sacred bond of compassionate love. To put it more succinctly, Kennedy gives us an author porno-addict and a spiritually lost housewife, and develops an unexpectedly tender love story beginning with their shaky first encounter. Further, A.L. Kennedy realizes a fundamental truth which seems to escape many others: fascination with pornography has more to do with loneliness than with anything else! I cannot understand why this book would offend -- it looks at dark areas of the human heart and says, "here, too, the light of compassion may shine."
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Small Miracles, May 3, 2000
If we do not have faith that this beautifully- shaped, sharply observed, often darkly comic story will arrive at the destination we anticipate, we might well find the novel all but impossible to read. Likewise, we need to believe in the narrative voice, that it has the authority and ability to perform multiple triangulations as it reveals the details of of lives that are lonely, bereft, corporeal. Every Cinderella tale risks providing a too-easy solution, and this one comes perilously close. Fortunately, we and the story are brought around by the writer's keen insight and gorgeous, edgy, compressed, sensual, poised, precise, vivid, surprising language that fairly bristles with life on the page.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great drama, starring an emotionally-flawed cast, January 22, 1999
By A Customer
A.L. Kennedy Knopf, Jan 199, $21.00, 214 pp. ISBN: 0-375-40272-1 In Glasgow, Helen Brindle wonders what she ever did to become trapped in a marriage to her verbally abusive and violent spouse. Her ego is so shattered that Helen suffers from an A to Z list of mental disorders. Desperate for help, Helen reads a book on mental healing by the self-proclaimed guru Edward Gluck. Helen decides he can actually help her and travels to Stuttgart to obtain the renowned Edward's aid. Helen and Edward are immediately attracted to one another, but he has as many phobias as she has. Worse yet, unlike her, he does not trust his own mental healing techniques. Ultimately Helen returns home, but Edward keeps sending her postcards confessing his love for her. When the abusive Mr. Brindle intercepts one, Helen's life is in danger from his reaction, leaving it up to Edward to hopefully come to his beloved's rescue. ORIGINAL BLISS demonstrates why A.L. Kennedy is considered one of the top Scottish writers today. Her relationship story line constantly moves forward, but it is the depth of the characters that turn this into a wonderful reading experience. The three prime players all suffer from some form of mental disorder that either leaves them paralyzed, self-loathing, or violent. However, readers will feel empathy towards Helen, pity towards Edward, and disgust towards Mr. Brindle. This novel is a great relationship drama, starring individuals whose flaws overwhelm them. Harriet Klausner
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