5 hours ago
Alive in the Merciful Country by AL Kennedy review – peace of mind meets a monster from the past
This provocative novel contains two narratives: the memoir of an activist starting a new life and the violent manifesto of a spy cop who knew herAnna McCormick, as many people did, is discovering that the first pandemic lockdown is playing havoc with time. Becalmed in her deliberately fortress-like London home with her young adult son Paul, she is simultaneously under pressure – teaching primary school children on Zoom, maintaining her stockpile of tinned goods, attempting to communicate with her mother’s care home – and forced into unnatural, unwanted inaction. As a survivor of domestic abuse, and several other threats to her safety and sanity, she is aware of the immense prize – a sanctuary, a job, meaningful relationships – she has secured, but also of its precariousness. Amid these conditions of unbidden contemplation, she begins to write a sort of memoir.So too does Buster, the shape-shifting, monstrous undercover cop who once infiltrated the OrKestrA, the “merry little band of...
Politics
