Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, Southwest Review, and
Publishers Weekly
[The stories] are short, but their mood and imagery are lasting, and
reflective of brutal truths of the commerce of human civilization . . .
chilling, finely tuned pieces on power and survival. --Los Angeles
Times
**
A collection of innovative and ambitious short stories from a visionary
young literary artist**
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.
