SOURCE: Knapp, Mona. Review of Everything You Need, by A. L. Kennedy. World Literature Today 76, no. 2 (spring 2002): 151.

In the following review, Knapp criticizes the improbable plot elements and Kennedy's overuse of profanity in Everything You Need.

Nathan Staples is a successful novelist who lives on a coastal island in permanent retreat from the world. Unfortunately, there is no fleeing his tormented inner world, lavishly displayed over the course of 500 pages [in Everything You Need], a world driven by biting remorse, self-condemnation, and graphic plans for suicide. Why the desperation? Nathan is still in love with his former wife, Maura, who deserted him twelve years earlier, taking along their four-year-old daughter Mary and never to be heard from again. The lost wife and daughter are the object of Nathan's obsessions, and their loss his reason for chronic suicidality.

Unable to successfully hang himself despite elaborate efforts, Nathan reluctantly remains...