Dominant Animal

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.

O colectie de nuvele inovatoare si ambitioase ale unui tanar artist literar vizionar In The Dominant Animal - colectia de debut aventuroasa si nelinistitoare a lui Kathryn Scanlan - este esentiala comprimarea. Propozitiile au fost taiate, reglate si tachinate necontenit pentru un impact maxim, iar o atentie feroce la ritm si sunet rezulta intr-un puls palpabil de excitabilitate si suferinta.