Intimacy, Violence and Identity: The Fiction of A.L. Kennedy

Abstract

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.