The Dominant Animal

The author of 9—Fog shares forty stories in “a delightful, mischievous, and mysterious collection that’s perfect for fans of Lydia Davis and Mary Ruefle” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

In The Dominant Animal—Kathryn Scanlan’s unsettling debut collection—compression is key. Sentences have been trimmed and tuned for maximum impact, with an attention to rhythm and sound that give off a 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 each other.

Scanlan moves from fine afternoons to unease and violence—and from deliberate ambiguity to shocking exactitude—in this “deeply enjoyable book . . . atmospheric with fear and shock, threat and disorientation” (David Hayden, The Guardian, UK).

Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, Southwest Review, and Publishers Weekly