Customer Reviews

Indelible Acts: Stories

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A.L. Kennedy, a prized Scottish fiction writer, brings us from across the pond, "Indelible Acts," a short-story collection filled with satisfying tales - her first to be published in the States. The unnamed narrator in "Not Anything to Do with Love" summons up the theme of the slim book with her notion of an ex-boyfriend, "There would be tenderness, but the kind you only feel when there's a bruise."

Kennedy explores what individuals will do when love is absent - adultery runs prominently as an inadequate fix. Thankfully, humor is sporadically present within the pages of heartache, thus keeping the pieces from becoming a veritable mine of depressive rants. Inner dialog also propels the stories with ease; it allows the reader to be aware of the painful disparity between outer and inner reality.

In "A Little like Light," John Edward feels stuck in a dismal marriage and an unrewarding job as a school janitor. He thinks of himself as an actor playing out a role for both his family and work. The only moments of solace he has are his thoughts: "The best love is a little like light. It is unremitting, cannot fail to find you, to take the shortest, surest way, as if that were marked out as part of your nature, the line where you and love are made to meet." The school's new teacher, Elizabeth Harrison, does find Edward, but he does nothing to pursue the new relationship despite his interest or take action to repair his failing marriage.

Edward, like Kennedy's other characters, is unable to make decisions that could improve life and love. However, hope for change does brim in "How to Find Your Way in Woods." Sarah invites her ex-boyfriend David for a holiday trip, but regrets the invitation once he arrives. Later she is able to walk away from him and says, "We didn't work, David."

Bohdan Kot

I picked this up on the recommendation of a travel guide book, as an example of good writing by a Scottish author. The writing is very good, but the Scottish nature of these stories is near to non-existent. What connects these stories together is their theme of adultery, a theme that is fairly common to mainstream literature these days (I've an aunt-in-law who used to complain that it was a criteria for Oprah's Book Club), but one that I had heretofore avoided in my own reading diet. Unfortunately, the saliciousness of these short stories was fairly mild, and while I found Kennedy's writing quite admirably, at the end of each story I found myself saying, "So what," a common complaint I have with modern short stories, which tend to be heavy in style and character and light in plot or substance. I did end up reading every story, so that's something of a recommendation, in the sense that if plot isn't necessary for you, you might find this book quite worthwhile.