There is something of the night about A L Kennedy. I don't say that in a bad way. Nor am I referring to her outfit, which was like a negative of a dentist's costume, a neat black ensemble which might as well have carried the message: "I won't pretend this isn't going to hurt."

A L Kennedy
Star Rating: ****
Susan George
Star Rating: ***
Susan Pinker
Star Rating: ****

There is something of the night about A L Kennedy. I don't say that in a bad way. Nor am I referring to her outfit, which was like a negative of a dentist's costume, a neat black ensemble which might as well have carried the message: "I won't pretend this isn't going to hurt." No, what I mean is that Kennedy seems to thrive by dancing on the edge of the abyss of human misery and extinction.

In the warm dark of the Festival's biggest tent, Kennedy offered us a treat: a new short story. At least, it was a pleasure to be read to, and at length. The material, however, was bittersweet at best, so the treat - as always with Kennedy - was laced with emotional arsenic.

Kennedy reads well, her second career as a stand-up comedian evident in the way she allows one-liners to find their laugh. Her story, Vanish, was about a man who bought tickets for his girlfriend and him to go to a magician's gig, except that by the time the day arrives, she has dumped him. When the pained narrator comments that "nothing made singleness worse than being well turned out", the tent laughed so appreciatively she murmured, in her teeth-gritted fashion: "Thank you for being a slightly sad audience."

In the time left for questions - and at the speed Kennedy speaks, 10 minutes can match anyone else's half-hour - she spoke fondly of her late grandfather, whose fascination with Houdini was the impetus behind this story. A bare-knuckle fighter, boxer and champion card player, he was a major influence. "He gave me confidence," she said. "He said he only lost one fight. It was his first fight, because he was scared. He beat himself." What she learned from him was: "Don't be afraid. The absence of fear means you can do anything."

Asked by an impertinent reader why she hadn't married, Kennedy said it was because writing is a male job, and what she needs is a wife, not a husband. Someone, in fact, like her grandfather, who would cook, wallpaper and clean while his wife went out to work.

In Susan Pinker's superbly lucid session, it became clear why men need wives even more urgently than does A L Kennedy. Statistically, they are by far the more fragile sex: more likely to die young, have accidents, go to jail, commit suicide and be killed at work. While they don't suffer the degree of self-doubt many women do, they enjoy an enviable condition Pinker calls False Optimism. This may be a delusion of talent, but as anyone who has ever worked in an office can attest, positive thinking, however ill-founded, is often the way to the top.

The patrician Susan George's talk revolved around two men who embody overweening male self-confidence. A harsh critic of her homeland, the American-born economic analyst was discussing her work, Hijacking America, which asks how the religious and secular right have managed to influence the American way of thinking. George spoke trenchantly about the Obama-McCain battle for the White House. While Obama offers a chink of hope, she made it depressingly clear that neither candidate is fundamentally going to change the way America thinks.

Not content with pouring icy water over the country's future, however, she also made some good suggestions for improving the US political system, starting with drastically reducing the length of presidential campaigns. This, she suggested, should be restricted to around three or four weeks. Well, given that both candidates come from the weaker sex, that would certainly be the kindest thing to do.