SOURCE: Jamie, Kathleen. Review of Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains, by A. L. Kennedy. Times Literary Supplement, no. 4592 (5 April 1991): 27.

In the following review, Jamie commends Kennedy's compassion and tenderness in Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains but argues that the stories are too repetitive in theme and weighed down by depressing plots.

This stylish-looking paperback from Polygon confirms the publisher's house-style and content: a city-based Scottishness with little room for magic. A. L. Kennedy's collection of short stories [Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains] hangs together well, too well perhaps. The blurb calls the stories “intimate narratives”. The narratives are of ordinary people, women mostly, who strive to make the best of unglamorous lives. Some are victims without rage, of poverty, abuse, circumstance. Some are married to unsatisfactory, even brutal husbands, one is HIV positive, one or two are having lonely and forgettable affairs. They slowly reveal...