‘Unusual, finely judged and wrought work… has reminded us of the beauty that can be discovered in the ordinary and in ordinary speech.’ — Lydia Davis on AUG 9—FOG

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. A ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress.

In these forty very short stories, the ordinary shifts into the uncanny: in living rooms and in hotel rooms, on suburban lawns and on the surgeon’s chair, characters — human and animal — eat, breathe, provoke and injure one another. Grandmothers sit tethered to the couch in a blue spell, lonesome men crouch among thorny shrubs, pets expire slowly or suddenly, and the nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet.

With exquisite control, Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. No mercy, a character says — and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.

‘Unusual, finely judged and wrought work… has reminded us of the beauty that can be discovered in the ordinary and in ordinary speech.’ — Lydia Davis on AUG 9—FOG

‘In these flawless, gripping, beautiful stories Kathryn Scanlan gives us a picture of life’s true uneasy heart.’ — David Hayden, author of Darker with the Lights On

‘The Dominant Animal left me feeling uneasy, off-balance and immeasurably better for having read it.’ — Julia Armfield, author of salt slow

‘Elegantly spare yet exhilarating… A startling, arresting debut.’ — Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time

‘I read The Dominant Animal in a single sitting and finished it hungry for more of the mercurial, singular, surprising magic Kathryn Scanlan is creating.’ — Megan Nolan

‘All of life’s absurdities and violences are here, dressed up and pulsing with an inimitable energy and intellect that sticks.’ — Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland

Kathryn Scanlan

Books