Book description
The twelve stories in
Indelible Acts
are variations on a theme of longing - the unassuagable human need for
contact, for completion, for that most fugitive gift of all: reciprocal
love. Its characters' lives are thwarted, dashed, impassioned, each in
their own way immolated by hope. A queue outside a cheese shop leads to
a thrilling infidelity; a crematorium funeral exposes a love gone sour;
a foreign hotel room becomes a diorama of despair as physical sickness
becomes a metaphor for incurable grief. In the title story, two lovers
confront their lusts amid the ruins of Rome; in 'A Bad Son' a young boy
from a damaged home searches for some kind of peace in the newly fallen
snow. The author of five previous novels, two books of non-fiction,
and three collections of short stories, A. L. Kennedy's most recent
novel, Day
, was the Costa Book of the Year. She has twice been selected as one of Granta
's Best of Young British Novelists and has won many prizes including the
Lannan Literary Award, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature,
the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award and the Saltire Scottish
Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow and is a part-time lecturer
in creative writing at Warwick University.
