'Shh, said the surgeon. Over my face, his gloved hand hung - you could even say it twitched. Then, with two fingertips, he pushed the lids of my eyes shut. You've seen this move before - some man, overcome with shame, unable, for selfish reasons, to look at what he's done.'
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, and a ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress. 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
'I read The Dominant Animal in a fit of extreme jealousy at Kathryn Scanlan's elegantly spare, yet exhilarating, prose... A startling, arresting debut.' Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time
'Kathryn Scanlan peers at the everyday as if from an alien perspective, rendering the most ordinary things almost spookily fresh and unfamiliar. The Dominant Animal left me feeling uneasy, off-balance and immeasurably better for having read it.' Julia Armfield, author of salt slow
'I read The Dominant Animal in a single sitting and finished it hungry for more of the mercurial, singular, surprising magic Kathryn Scanlon is creating. She is a writer whose talent and originality are so pronounced that they are almost confrontational.' Megan Nolan
'Scanlan's fiction presents all the trinkets and niceties of life and delicately takes them apart to reveal their steaming entrails. All our absurdities and violences are here, dressed up and pulsing with an inimitable energy and intellect that sticks.' Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland
Genre: Literary Fiction
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, and a ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress. 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
'I read The Dominant Animal in a fit of extreme jealousy at Kathryn Scanlan's elegantly spare, yet exhilarating, prose... A startling, arresting debut.' Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time
'Kathryn Scanlan peers at the everyday as if from an alien perspective, rendering the most ordinary things almost spookily fresh and unfamiliar. The Dominant Animal left me feeling uneasy, off-balance and immeasurably better for having read it.' Julia Armfield, author of salt slow
'I read The Dominant Animal in a single sitting and finished it hungry for more of the mercurial, singular, surprising magic Kathryn Scanlon is creating. She is a writer whose talent and originality are so pronounced that they are almost confrontational.' Megan Nolan
'Scanlan's fiction presents all the trinkets and niceties of life and delicately takes them apart to reveal their steaming entrails. All our absurdities and violences are here, dressed up and pulsing with an inimitable energy and intellect that sticks.' Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland
Genre: Literary Fiction
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Kathryn Scanlan's The Dominant Animal