What Becomes by A.L. Kennedy

What Becomes by the award-winning Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy has been billed as one of the 10 best works of fiction in 2010. Indeed, a couple of the selections in Kennedy’s short-story collection are truly good. Others left me wondering what I had just read, what the story really was or really meant.

An emotional thread running throughout the stories is the loneliness felt by the brokenhearted -- the kind that is worst when people are not physically alone, the kind that makes people do silly, crazy, even dangerous things.

In “Sympathy,” for example, two strangers have sex in a hotel room. The graphic dialogue reflects more than the things they are doing but also their hope for something better even though, rationally, they know this meeting won’t bring them the happiness they crave.

Sometimes, the emotional connections sought, if not obtained, rely on tangible objects. In the story "Edinburgh," books are the vehicle. One of my favorite passages goes like this: "She gave him books. The same words that were in her mind, now in yours, still warm."

When I read that, I realized that's one reason I enjoy certain books -- used books with the scribblings, underlining of long-ago readers, books recommended by authors I respect. Books can provide a common thread between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the prince and the pauper, the parent and the far-away, homesick child.

The namesake of Kennedy's book and the title story is an old Jimmy Ruffin song, “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted.”
“I’ll be searching everywhere
Just to find someone to care.”

The title story, the first of 12, is about a man named Frank. He’s in a bad marriage and goes to the movies, only to find himself the only person in the theatre, one where the film’s sound isn’t even working.

Kennedy’s book reminds me a bit of the film, Short Cuts, based on a collection of Raymond Carver stories. If you like Carver, you’ll probably like this book as well. If not, go on to something else.