A.L. Kennedy 
Indelible Acts 

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.