The author confronts her own mortality with candour and crisp humour in this thoughtful exploration of bullfighting

Ostensibly an exploration of the Spanish corrida de toros, On Bullfighting begins with a confession. Its author AL Kennedy reveals how, prior to starting the book, she attempted suicide during a bout of depression. What stopped her from jumping to her death was music, specifically the sound of a man tunelessly singing “what has always been my least favourite folk song in all the world, Mairi’s Wedding … Murdering myself to this accompaniment is more than I can bear.”

Why is she telling us this? Because she has faced death and her book is “about people who risk death for a living”. What occurs in the bullring isn’t really a fight, she adds, since no man “can actually fight half a ton or so of bull. It is more complicated, repellent, fascinating, grotesque, sacramental, ugly, ritualistic, haphazard, sacred and blasphemous than any fight.”