On Bullfighting

By exploring a rite that exists beyond sport, below art, and past paganism, Scottish novelist Kennedy means to get in the ring with mortality — and not merely by admiring, Hemingway-style, the poetry of blades, horns, and blood. She opens chapter 1, ''An Introduction to Death,'' with a wry recounting of her aborted suicide attempt and goes on to explain that this assignment offers a chance to face up to herself: ''Matadors are like the rest of us, naked in the grip of reality.'' It's on to Madrid and Granada, gorings and glories, butchery and heroism rendered with precision. The poet Garcia Lorca considered bullfighting a religious mystery. In On Bullfighting, Kennedy charges in with curiosity and a flinty wit to pin its secrets down.