Readers will have their own opinions as to how appropriate the opening chapter of this book is - a disturbing and painfully personal account of Kennedy's contemplation of suicide. Do we need to know? Do we want to know? Kennedy is a fine writer, but there are some things that are arguably best kept private, and such an opening chapter certainly runs the danger of alienating readers. Given all this, unsurprisingly, On Bullfighting is a meditation on aspects of death: why a man chooses to stand in a public ring and flirt with mortality. Kennedy went to Spain to explore a unique culture which has long had bullfighting at its core. She fingers the themes of fear, pain, history, rituals, sacrifice, death, and survival. There is much that is fascinating about this contemporary look at bullfighting, which has an extensive vocabulary all to itself. Sentido, for instance, is "the bull's awareness that man is his enemy rather than the cloth of the cape"; and Querencia is "A favourite spot the bull will always return to". However, given Kennedy's worryingly fragile state of mind throughout, the reader does end up feeling that she is the one dodging the bull, hiding behind the swinging cape of her prose, from which she emerges now and then, appearing sadly vulnerable.
