A Look Back At A.L. Kennedy's First Novel
The Scottish Writer's Looking For the Possible Dance Still Sings
It’s hard to believe that it was only 16 years ago that the Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy first burst onto the literary scene with her novel Looking for the Possible Dance, after publishing with a small press a book of short stories called Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains. So much has happened with her writing since then, including winning the covetous Costa Book Award (formerly the Whitbread Book Award) for her latest novel, Day, that looking back on Looking for the Possible Dance almost seems like gazing through a telescope at a planet that human beings aren’t technologically equipped to travel to.
But for fans of Kennedy or newcomers to her work, re-reading or reading that 1993 novel is well-worth the effort, not only because it launched the fine work that followed it, but also because it has a tone and character all its own.
Brilliant Style Over All
The first 20 pages of Looking for the Possible Dance seem like three separate novels, all involving the main character, a young Scottish woman named Margaret, nimbly strung together by the consistency of Kennedy’s writing style: a brilliant host of delicate balances between humor and tenderness, omniscience and free indirect style, and details that seem random but that fall into place like eventual answers to convoluted questions.
First we have a portrait of Margaret’s relationship with her father, both as a child and as an adult, and then we have a portrait of growing up in modern-day Scotland, and finally we have what seems to be the beginning of a forward-motion narrative: Margaret, who’s lost her job, leaving Scotland for London, perhaps permanently.
As the novel progresses, it really becomes about another man in Margaret’s life, her lover Colin, and their life together in Scotland, but that doesn’t mean that it clumsily becomes another novel altogether. The opening motifs continue and are still very much relevant, especially how Margaret’s relationship with her father affects her relationship with Colin.
A World of Its Own
This skillful and original narrative structure does pale a bit in comparison to the dazzling way So I Am Glad (the novel many people consider Kennedy’s masterpiece) unfolds. And Looking for the Possible Dance is certainly not as daring and emotionally searing as Original Bliss and Paradise, or as ambitious and wide-ranging as Everything You Need, or as technically impeccable as Day, or even as finely wrought and subtle as her numerous short stories.
But Looking for the Possible Dance is a vibrant world unto itself, bearing the light touch of an author naturally picking the first fruits of her talent, and not painstakingly breaking new ground both in terms of subject matter and of increasing the vigor of her writing style. Fans of Kennedy wouldn’t want to live without that new ground, but they can also view her first novel as far more than a footnote to her career. And for newcomers to her work, why not start at the very beginning?
A.L. Kennedy's Looking For the Possible Dance
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