Kick the Latch

Description

Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc of one woman’s life at the racetrack–the flat land and ramshackle backstretch; the bad feelings and friction; the winner’s circle and the racetrack bar; the fancy suits and fancy boots; and the “particular language” of “grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secretaries, stewards, pony people, hotwalkers, everybody”–with economy and integrity.

Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel investigates form and authenticity in a feat of synthesis reminiscent of Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony. As Scanlan puts it, “I wanted to preserve–amplify, exaggerate–Sonia’s idiosyncratic speech, her bluntness, her flair as a storyteller. I arrived at what you could call a composite portrait of a self.” Whittled down with a fiercely singular artistry, Kick the Latch bangs out of the starting gate and carries the reader on a careening joyride around the inside track.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Kathryn Scanlan
Published: 09/27/2022
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9780811232005
Pages: 144
Weight: 0.26lbs
Size: 0.46″ H x 7.23″ L x 4.72″ W

About the Author
Scanlan, Kathryn: – Kathryn Scanlan received a 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for “exceptional accomplishment” in literature. Her story collection The Dominant Animal was named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, Southwest Review, and Publishers Weekly, and her first book, Aug 9–Fog, was praised in a starred review by Publishers Weekly as “an outstanding debut, profound and moving: Scanlan’s portrait of an everywoman feels entirely new.” She lives in Los Angeles.