Kick the Latch

With its ruthless concision and artful mysteries, Kathryn Scanlan's Kick the Latch is lightning in a bottle. Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel vividly captures thearc 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. 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 revelation in its unadorned, unromantic, plain power.' Andrew McMillan'It's a landscape full of exhausting labor and habitual violence, but also ecstatic devotion and joy . . . Scanlan writes about ordinary life in extraordinary ways.' Leslie Jamison, New Yorker'I was absolutely blown away . . . A finely wrought work of art that takes one person's life and expands it to create something wondrous and universal. The pages I read seemed to capture all that is vital to human existence.' Tash Aw'Kick the Latch comes at you fast, and is a hell of a ride. I loved it.' Jon McGregor'Pure exhilaration. No one works with fineness, with exactitude, with the beating heart of fiction and of life, quite like Kathryn Scanlan.' Amina Cain'Superb . . . Niche and precise in the revelation of an ordinary life (Johnson's Train Dreams, or Seethaler's A Whole Life) with the distillation of Lydia Davis.' Sinead Gleeson'Revelatory . . . every word is essential.' Amy Hempel'A wonderfully empathic window opened onto a fascinating life lived on the margins.' Eric Banks'Performs the trick of turning a life . . . into art, and does so with particular charm, will, and intensity.' Lucie Elven