SOURCE: Lannon, Frances. “Taking the Bull by the Horns—and the Camera.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5051 (21 January 2000): 10-11.

In the following excerpt, Lannon characterizes Kennedy's depiction of the sport of bullfighting in On Bullfighting as respectful and illuminating.

A. L. Kennedy attended several bullfights in Madrid and Seville when she was researching On Bullfighting. She took a notebook, binoculars and two cameras, fieldwork equipment that amused her neighbours in the stands, who felt no need of pen or lens to identify and understand what they were witnessing. When the fourth bull of the first corrida she attended tosses Otto Rodriguez and wounds him, she writes: “I watch through the telephoto lens of my camera and I take photographs and keep taking photographs until my film runs out.” Yet there are no photographs in the book. The author relies on words, even while lamenting at the beginning and end...