Kick the Latch - Softcover

Scanlan, Kathryn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081123200X ISBN 13: 9780811232005

Publisher: New Directions, 2022

Synopsis

About one woman’s fine, hard life at the racetrack, Kick the Latch–with its ruthless concision and artful mysteries–is lightning in a bottle

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.

About this title

About the Author

Kathryn Scanlan is the author of Aug 9―Fog, The Dominant Animal, and Kick the Latch. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Review Award, the Gordon Burn Prize, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Jan Michalski Foundation and the European Capital of Culture program in Chemnitz, Germany. Her work has been published in Granta, The Paris Review, Another Gaze, Brick, and The Yale Review; she is also a regular contributor to the journal NOON, edited by Diane Williams. Originally from Iowa, she lives in Los Angeles.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081123200X
• ISBN 13: 9780811232005
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144