Kick the Latch: Kathryn Scanlan
Language: English
Published by Daunt Books Publishing, 2023
- Softcover
- Used

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- Title
- Kick the Latch: Kathryn Scanlan
- Author
- Scanlan, Kathryn
- Publisher
- Daunt Books Publishing
- Publication year
- 2023
- Condition
- Fine
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1914198255
- ISBN 13
- 9781914198250
- Item weight
- 209 grams
Shortlisted for the Gordon Burns Prize 2023/2024
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Award 2023
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.
‘A chiselled little gem . . . about a horse trainer called Sonia and told in her unforgettably downbeat voice. Such poise and economy – I can’t remember a novel about work that’s impressed me so.’ Tim Winton, Books of the Year, Sydney Morning Herald
‘Utterly fresh, shimmery as a dragonfly . . . Ridiculously good.’ Kerri ní Dochartaigh
‘Kick the Latch performs the trick of turning a life, with its practicalities and speed, into art, and does so with particular charm, will, and intensity.’ Lucie Elven
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About the Author
Kathryn Scanlan is the author of The Dominant Animal and lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in NOON, Granta and Fence, and is forthcoming in The Paris Review. Her story ‘The Old Mill’ was selected by Michael Cunningham for the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. She has degrees in painting, writing, and English from the University of Iowa and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her debut novel, AUG 9―FOG, a literary adaptation of a found diary, was published by FSG in 2019.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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