Original Bliss

From one of Scotland's most widely praised writers, named by Granta as one of the Twenty Best Young British Novelists: a beautiful and terrifying story of passion and pornography

Helen Brindle thinks she has lost God--but it is simply love that she's missing. She certainly can't find it at home, with the violent, deadly Mr. Brindle: trapped in an abusive marriage, tormented by existential and personal doubt, she suffers from insomnia, emotional paralysis, and pathological inhibition. Until she meets Edward E. Gluck.

Edward Gluck is a public personality, a renowned genius and group mental healer, guru to people like Helen through his famous self-help process; privately, he is painfully obsessed with masturbation and self-punishment, unable to employ his own fatuous self-help techniques to overcome his personal disgust and psychological anemia.

Original Bliss tells the story of an excruciatingly awkward courtship between two soul- sick people--the one brutally shy, the other an exhibitionist--searching for a way to break out of their isolation. By turns acerbic and tender, and with remarkable economy and precision, A. L. Kennedy writes about the attempt to close emotional distances and fill physical voids, and the aching need for completion and healing. A brilliant American debut from one of Scotland's finest young writers.

A. L. Kennedy, the author of two previous novels and two short story collections, has received six awards for her writing, including the Somerset Maugham Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the Encore Award. She lives in Glasgow.