AL Kennedy's new collection of short stories What Becomes provides a wide-ranging set of answers to the question which ends, "of the broken-hearted?" Its stories tell of marriage breakdowns, one-night stands, redundancy, bereavement and other modern varieties of heartbreak. Life in this writer's world is not, as she explains "a delicious cocktail of puppies and flowers".
In our interview, she explains how these new stories were written in something of a damburst, after she broke her rhythm of producing a collection between each novel and had ideas building up for some years. She explains that, for the most part, she doesn't think of short stories as a dramatically distinct kind of writing to the novel, and is happy to report that her publisher, mercifully, doesn't treat them any differently.
Kennedy, whose blogposts on the writing life are immensely popular with our readers, also talks about the dangers that this existence holds, in particular of falling into "your own little Matrix" of imaginary relationships.
