Kennedy tenderly anatomised London and loneliness in Serious Sweet.
Ali Smith
Guardian, Book of the Year
So beautiful that it makes your head hurt.
Katy Guest
Independent
Serious Sweet is a magnificent novel, showing Kennedy at the very top of her game. Ambitious in scope, daring in execution, full of dazzling apercus and dark comedy... It is a tale of redemption, as serious and as sweet as you could wish for.
Rebecca Abrams
Financial Times
In equal measures, funny, sad and addictive... The opening pages had me holding my breath in fear and anticipation... Capturing the relentless hustle of London life to perfection.
Glenda Marchant
Stylist
A. L. Kennedy shakes her city until the right atoms collide. She stands back to give a picture of the whole of London on one day, and then suddenly swoops down to pick up a tiny detail.
Kate Saunders
The Times
Deeply affecting... Kennedy strips her characters emotionally bare... 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.
Hannah Beckerman
Observer
A. L. Kennedy's eighth novel is a profoundly moving, often funny, and at points rending depiction of two good people. Serious Sweet is about the heroism of decency; albeit damaged decency... Kennedy is not one of our finest writers simply because of the quality of her prose: she is because of the moral profundity of her work.
Stuart Kelly
Scotsman
This is a bold, cinematic novel... Parts of it are terrifically funny.
Herald
A genuinely stirring love story.
Mail on Sunday
Her flair for describing feelings and relationships makes this an engaging window into the messy minds of Londoners and her commentary on the city rings true.
Susannah Butter
Evening Standard