So I Am Glad: A Novel

By A. L. Kennedy

The ferociously talented author of Original Bliss and On Bullfighting offers this haunting tale of two forlorn people who find in each other a hope and love as genuine and original as this marvelous book in which they come to life.

M. Jennifer Wilson is a mid-thirties radio announcer living in Glasgow. She shares a house with Art and Liz, two typical Scotland thirtysomethings, but her life takes a drastic turn with the arrival of her new housemate, an elusive man who glows in the dark and can't remember his name. He soon reveals himself to be none other than Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, the famed writer and duelist of eighteenth-century France, and what unfolds is a love story stark and surreal, tender and humane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307427830

A. L. Kennedy

A.L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards, including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in London and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at the University of Warwick.

Reviews for So I Am Glad

[gayla.bassham · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Abandoning because I just can't get into this book. At all. I struggled through half of it yesterday, and finally decided that life was too short. I'm giving it two stars because I'm pretty sure it's not you, A. L. Kennedy, it's me.

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy; (1/2*)I attempted So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy. The inside jacket cover states: "Jennifer Wilson is by vocation a disembodied voice, a radio announcer hiding from her life in a job that perfectly suits her constitution by allowing her to remain audible but invisible, protected by an invincible wall of anonymity." I should definitely agree with that. I didn't care for the way it was written nor did I care for the story line. I am not a prude but eventually I applied the Pearl Rule. Was simply unable to complete this book.I am amazed that it is on the 2014 Bailey's Long List; absolutely amazed.

[miserablelibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“In her first full-length novel to appear in this country, the prize-winning Scottish novelist A.L. Kennedy returns to the themes of isolation, emotional destitution and love with an ambitious, darkly funny book … “ Jennifer Wilson finds herself living in a house with Savinien, who claims to be Cyrano de Bergerac. The story is clever, the dialogue quick and realistic. Parts of the tale have a surreal, dream-like quality. A clever story which tells of love found and lost, and the price one pays for loving.

[hayduke_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It would be far too easy to merely state that this book is about a lonely woman, who meets a man, who claims to be the reincarnation of Cyrano de Bergerac. This is an emotionally complex story with some of the most beautiful language put to paper that I've read in years. There are paragraphs I want to cut out and put on the wall as keepsakes. This is certainly not your everyday romantic fantasy. So I Am Glad is just as much about pain as it is about love.