This essay will discuss Kennedy’s major fiction: Looking for the
Possible Dance, So I Am Glad, the novella Original Bliss and the short
story “Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains.” In a postmodernist
world where traditional relationships have broken down, Kennedy posits
an overwhelming desire for intimacy. However, many risks have to
be taken in ‘new’ relationships. It is not easy to get to know people and
even when they are known they are sometimes looking for a commitment
which is not necessarily a concomitant of intimacy. The problems
raised by not knowing one’s partner or by wanting different things are
often filled with violence as personal and capable of reaching the innermost
depths of a person’s being as the intimacy of which it is the
dark aspect. The essay will also examine Kennedy’s narrative technique
as a means of expressing the hesitancies, fears and bravery of modern
relationships.
