SOURCE: Dunnigan, Sarah M. “A. L. Kennedy's Longer Fiction: Articulate Grace.” In Contemporary Scottish Women Writers, edited by Aileen Christianson and Alison Lumsden, pp. 144-55. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Dunnigan traces the recurring themes of sexuality, abusive relationships, and the quest for love in Looking for the Possible Dance, So I Am Glad, Original Bliss, and Everything You Need.

Alison Louise Kennedy (b. 1965) is an elusive rather than an evasive writer; elusive in her refusal to be pinned down to any literary ‘philosophy’ or credo of gender or nationalism, not evasive because she states clearly that, ‘When I write, my aim is to communicate, person to person. I am a human being telling another human being a story which may or may not be true, but which hopefully has a life and truth and logic of its own’.¹ That comment, exemplifying Kennedy's rigorous...