SOURCE: Freeman, Hadley. “She's Donne It Again.” Observer (24 November 2002): 17.

In the following review, Freeman enthusiastically praises Kennedy's descriptive and precise language in the short stories in Indelible Acts.

It is, in all honesty, something of a relief to see A. L. Kennedy's name on the front of a collection of short stories as opposed to the handspan-sized novels which she has been thumping out. Kennedy's is a very concentrated prose: multiple connotations are compressed into every sentence, every description, without any dilution. But like a gourmet cake, it's impossible to digest portions any larger than a vignette slice without incurring a very bad stomach ache.

Indelible Acts, a collection of 12 short stories, provides the perfect structure for Kennedy's strengths. Each bite-sized tale is about love in all its forms—maternal, filial, sexual and thwarted. Here she shows how to make a page sizzle with intensity: adjectives are shuffled...