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,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.
The clay head of a man is bought and displayed as a trophy. Interior life manifests on the physical plane,where characters - human and animal - eat and breathe,provoke and injure one another. With exquisite control,Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence - and also from deliberate and generative ambiguity to shocking,revelatory exactitude. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. How often the conclusions open - rather than tie - up. How they twist alertly. No mercy,a character says - and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.
Publisher: Daunt BooksISBN: 9781911547563
Kommentar