A L Kennedy: On Bullfighting

		ON BULLFIGHTING This book will be about people who risk death for a living. Whatever you or I think of how and why they do this, they are making that commitment every working day- a commitment which I am pointing out I know that I can't equal... But I'll give you as much as I can. I do promise that." Bullfighting- this complicated, repellent, fascinating, grotesque, sacramental, ugly, ritualistic, haphazard, and blasphemous fight. Hemingway, Conrad and Lorca are amongst the many who have written about it, now it's the turn of acclaimed novelist A.L.Kennedy. Unpeeling the layers she looks beyond the theatre, the costume and the well-worn plot and focuses on the fact that a man faces his death while a crowd looks on.And so people are drawn to witness the ultimate spectator sport. In this book A.L.Kennedy explains the mechanics of bullfighting and then dissects them with surgical precision. The result is a startling confrontation with mortality and an extraordinary work of literature. Winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 2001 US and German ("Steerkampf") editions were published in 2001.

		Reviews:
Good:	"Kennedy writes with enormous power and empathy about particular bullfighters, analysing their personal style, artistry and courage in their public confrontation with mortality." Frances Lannon -TLS "As she shows in this book she is a natural writer, and writing, though it can offer her little solace against the pains and losses of life, will not release her... A writer who can write like this has nothing wrong with her backbone." John Banville - Irish Times
ALK says:	Mr. Banville is a fine man and also a born writer.
Good:	"..approaches the pagan spectacle with an air of sardonic melancholy and occasionally mordant wit. Though attuned to the sexual symbolism of the corrida, Kennedy's commentary is untainted by Hemmingwayesque hormonal outpourings. As artful as a matador's final pass." Esquire "I'd give an arm and a leg for a tithe of her talent." Brian Davis - Time Out "...you can't help feeling that this archaic sport has been honoured beyond its worth by the attention of such an open-minded, articulate intelligence." Rosmary Goring - Scotland on Sunday
ALK says:	She always wanted to be a vet, I believe.
Good:	"Good books - this is one - can display for us some of the brutal and beautiful ways humans have of lying or inventing ways to make life bearable or, just for a while, special." Niall Duthie - The Scotsman "Odd,beautiful and moving, On Bullfighting is one of the best books of the year." Jeanette Winterson
Bad:	"...quite fails to evoke the ritualistic throb of the thing" John Tague - Independent on Sunday "...at other times, it's well, downright moaning and bloody miserable." Eamonn O'Neill - Glasgow Herald
ALK says:	Eamonn O'Neill, author of the bullfighting book that few ever read. And that I refused to review.
Bad:	"She leaves herself and the reader in a strange limbo, never really touching the mystery at the heart of the bullfight, nor that at the heart of the writer." Stephanie Merrit - The Observer
Silly:	"I so believe that we cannot have joy or beauty without risk, but I am still uneasy about the links that Kennedy is forging here between brutality and ecstasy, religion and death. I was also uneasy because almost every sentence makes clear that she can write, that she is writing... so either she or we are being deceived." Tana Dineen - Openmind
ALK says:	What happens when they get a psychologist to review books. God help her patients.
Silly:	"For a writer suffering from acute writer's block and harbouring intense fantasies about ending it all by chucking herself from her rooftop, AL Kennedy should have known better than high-tailing it of to Spain to write about bullfighting." Andrew Davies - The Big Issue
ALK says:	Not suffering from writer's block - simply an unwillingness to write - the roof chucking attempt was not a fantasy and it was a window not a rooftop, by - hey - otherwise a truly great and human opening paragraph.
Silly:	"In fact, there are fewer mistakes and less irritation than one is led to expect." Tristan Garel-Jones - Literary Review
ALK says:	Great reviewer's double-bluff, find faults that no expert checking the book has been able to identify, but fail to mention them.
Silly:	"I found Kennedy's personal protagonism in the book a little tiresome: her backaches, the pills she takes - all just a tad de trop." Tristan Garel-Jones - Literary Review
ALK says:	And may the good Lord keep you from a slipped disk - thoroughly de trop.

ON BULLFIGHTING