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A woman’s desire for escape from the stasis of domesticity is wryly observed in the poet’s tragicomic second novel
In Luke Kennard’s second novel, The Answer to Everything, the details of his fictional world begin to clarify. Kennard’s first novel, The Transition, coalesced around the slow reveal of a portrait of mental illness under the surface of an apparent dystopia. Here, Kennard pulls a similar trick, turning his readers away from the emotional heart of his work until very late in its unfolding, a revelation that carries a powerful emotional charge when it finally pays off.
Kennard writes about the middle class. Flat whites, home ownership, therapists, teachers – this is his territory, and he subverts and skewers the place where so many of us live with Ballardian flair. The Answer to Everything is essentially the story of an affair that develops when Emily, Steven and their two sons move in opposite Elliott, Alathea and their two sons in Criterion Gardens, a 90s housing estate repurposed as a kind of social project – communal allotment, a pool of “eco cars” with charging pods available to borrow. Continue reading...