Recommended Reads: What Becomes

This week’s Recommended Read comes from Christine Johnson, our Volunteer Manager, who has been discovering the fortunes of the broken-hearted in A. L. Kennedy’s fifth collection of short stories, What Becomes.

I chose What Becomes for its title – it’s so tantalising – and for its author, A.L. Kennedy, whose Costa Prize winning novel Day I had fallen in love with. When I bought it, I didn’t even know it was a short story collection. These are stories about people in crisis. Whether it’s a grieving woman who picks up a stranger in a hotel bar or a young soldier and his mates struggling to accept what their war has done to them, you are made to care deeply about these characters over only ten or so pages.

If you’re like me, and don’t have much time for leisure reading right now, I’d recommend this book. Who can’t find twenty minutes to sit down and get immersed in the lives of The Broken Hearted?

What Becomes, A .L. Kennedy, Jonathan Cape (2009).