A.L. Kennedy short story
From “Wasps,” a short story by A.L. Kennedy in the New Yorker.
Let’s have a good morning. Before your mother starts to scream and
doesn’t stop and has to be taken away to the hospital for screaming
people. Who would make your breakfasts then?Her sons showed no sign of having heard her, and she wondered again
which of her threats they would remember, which would be useful and
which would scar. It never was easy to tell, she supposed, if your
parenting was mostly beneficial or bound to harm.
I really enjoyed her novel, Paradise. I was surprised to learn she now does stand-up comedy. The humor in her writing is quite dark, even bleak.