Indelible Acts by AL Kennedy

An exhilarating dissection of blighted lives

The author of Indelible Acts clearly endorses TS Eliot's definition of Hell rather than Jean-Paul Sartre's. Whatever the difficulties AL Kennedy's characters face in dealing with other people, they know no horror greater than to be locked in the loneliness of their own skins.

The desperate need to make contact felt by virtually all the characters in this volume of stories is best expressed by Mr Barker, a riding-school proprietor in "Touch Positive". "People like us? We're like the horses. Yes, we are. We're touch positive. You press against us, even hit us, and we lean in to feel more. We like touching. We're not ourselves without it."

The alienation Kennedy's characters experience begins young. In "A Bad Son", Ronald, the sole child protagonist in this collection, is spending a day with his schoolfriend, Jim, on his family's farm. The sensitive Ronald longs to blend with the social and physical landscape, talking a broader Scots than at home and taking a dangerous toboggan ride. Tortured by a sense of inauthenticity, Ronald tries out various personalities: the Mad Ronnie, to enable him to impose himself on others; and the Yogi, to efface himself and avoid further pain. With great skill, Kennedy gradually reveals that this is not the familiar story of a misfit schoolboy but a darker one of domestic violence.

Two stories focus on solitary people who yearn for emotional fulfilment. Fittingly for a writer who prefers to be known by her initials, Kennedy creates male protagonists every bit as powerful and convincing male as her female ones.

Howie, in "An Immaculate Man", is one of the finest. A closet gay lawyer who does not hate being gay ("I only hate me"), he's driven to distraction after receiving an ambiguous bearhug from his senior partner. Meanwhile, June in "Elsewhere" – she has moved to the American Midwest to escape her past – watches in quiet despair as the townsfolk enjoy their rodeo and she remembers an abortive seduction by the local Don Juan.

However much emotion Howie and June invest in their search for a partner, Kennedy makes it clear that they are bound to be disappointed. The physical settings of her stories change from Italy to Switzerland to New England to Scotland, but the emotional setting always remains bleak. Couples torment and betray one another as a matter of course. Adultery is as much a part of their lives as a mortgage.

The joys of marriage have long palled, but even those of adultery seem beyond the reach of men such as Greg, whose perfect affair is blighted by his own millennial fears. In the title story, an illicit couple escape for a weekend in Rome, but Kennedy shows that their relationship is doomed by the extreme sex acts they engage in to compensate for their long periods of separation.

The world of these stories may be bleak, but the experience of reading them is exhilarating. They are shot through with quirky observations, felicitous phrases and, above all, a rigorous attempt to capture fleeting sensations. This is Kennedy's fourth collection and again she shows herself to be a mistress of her art.