num_pages: 543
description: From the prodigiously talented A. L. Kennedy comes a flamboyantly stylish and fiercely emotional novel about fathers and daughters, creation and self-destruction, and love’s paradoxical power to heal its most devastated victims. One such victim is Nathan Staples, a writer whose hilarious contempt for humanity is surpassed only by his corrosive self-loathing. Along with five equally dysfunctional colleagues Nathan lives on an island retreat off the coast of Wales, where he yearns for the daughter he lost years before. Now, in defiance of all his hopes, Mary Lamb–herself an aspiring writer–is about to join him as the seventh member of the colony. As Nathan tortuously wins the trust of the child who has no inkling of their true relationship, Mary comes to a gradual understanding of her gift. In Everything You Need, A. L. Kennedy combines the mythic resonance of Arthurian legend with a sensibility as lyrical as it is profane.
language: English
title: Everything You Need
titlecomplete: Everything You Need
characters: Uncle Morgan, Richard Fisher, Jack Grace, Sophie Christopher, Joe Christopher, Eckless, Louis Elcho, Uncle Bryn, Ruth Alvey, Mary Lamb, Lynda Dowding, Nathan Staples
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Scotland, Novels, Modern, Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature
ratings_count: 473
places: Wales
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist
publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group