Serious Sweet - Hardcover

Kennedy, A. L.

2.95

642 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1503936511 ISBN 13: 9781503936515

Publisher: Little A, 2016

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Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

“Kennedy’s prose is lively and assured.” —The New York Times Book Review

A good man in a bad world, Jon Sigurdsson is fifty-nine and divorced, a senior civil servant in London who hates many of his colleagues and loathes his work for a government engaged in unmentionable acts.

Meg Williams is a bankrupt accountant—two words you don’t want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your r�sum�. She’s forty-five and shakily sober, living on Telegraph Hill in London, where she can see the city unfurl below her.

Somewhere out there is Jon, pinballing around the city with a cell phone and a letter-writing habit he can’t break. He’s a man on the brink, leaking government secrets and affection for a woman he barely knows as he runs for his life.

Poignant, deeply funny, and beautifully written, Serious Sweet is about two decent, damaged people trying to make moral choices in an immoral world, ready to sacrifice what’s left of themselves for honesty and for a chance at tenderness. As Jon and Meg navigate the sweet and serious heart of London—passing through twenty-four hours that will change them both forever—they tell an unusual and moving love story.

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About the Author:

A.L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards, including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in London and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at the University of Warwick.

Review:

“So beautiful that it makes your head hurt.” —Independent

“This is a bold, cinematic novel...Parts of it are terrifically funny.” —Herald

“A genuinely stirring love story.” —Mail on Sunday

“Deeply affecting...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.” —Observer

“With sometimes battering extremes of emotion and pain that ranges from personal injury to corrosive political nastiness, Kennedy's urban odyssey offers an unusual and often powerful love story.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

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