'Unusual, finely judged and wrought work. . . has reminded us of the beauty that can be discovered in the ordinary and in ordinary speech.' -- Lydia Davis on AUG 9-FOG
A collection of innovative and ambitious short stories from a visionary young writer
In The Dominant Animal - Kathryn Scanlan's adventurous, unsettling debut collection - compression is key. Sentences have been relentlessly trimmed, tuned and teased for maximum impact. A ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress.
In these forty very short stories, the ordinary shifts into the uncanny: in living rooms and in hotel rooms, on suburban lawns and on the surgeon's chair, characters - human and animal - eat, breathe, provoke and injure one another. Grandmothers sit tethered to the couch in a blue spell, lonesome men crouch among thorny shrubs, pets expire slowly or suddenly, and the nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet.
With exquisite control, Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. No mercy, a character says - and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.
'Unusual, finely judged and wrought work. . . has reminded us of the beauty that can be discovered in the ordinary and in ordinary speech.' -- Lydia Davis on AUG 9-FOG
'In these flawless, gripping, beautiful stories Kathryn Scanlan gives us a picture of life's true uneasy heart.' -- David Hayden, author of Darker with the Lights On
'The Dominant Animal left me feeling uneasy, off-balance and immeasurably better for having read it.' -- Julia Armfield, author of salt slow
'Elegantly spare yet exhilarating. . . A startling, arresting debut.' -- Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time
'I read The Dominant Animal in a single sitting and finished it hungry for more of the mercurial, singular, surprising magic Kathryn Scanlan is creating.' -- Megan Nolan
'All of life's absurdities and violences are here, dressed up and pulsing with an inimitable energy and intellect that sticks.' -- Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland
