A.L. Kennedy 
Original Bliss 

The stories collected in
Original Bliss are concerned, appropriately, with the complexities of sex and the lack of it. In the long novella that gives the book its title, Helen Brindle thinks she has lost God – but it is simply love that she“s missing. She can“t find it at home, with the violent, deadly Mr Brindle, but will she find it in Stuttgart when she meets the enigmatic Edward E. Gluck, with his Process and his paraphernalia? And what happens when her father confessor starts to confess? A beautiful and terrifying examination of passion and pornography, of the aching need for completion and healing.