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The 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.
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.
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 7, 2020
76 people are currently reading
2559 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Scanlan
9 books128 followersKathryn Scanlan's work has appeared in NOON, Fence, Granta, and Egress. Her debut collection of stories, The Dominant Animal, is forthcoming from FSG Originals in 2020. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews
January 28, 2020
Every once in a while I like to pick up a book that may be out of my wheelhouse. Something that just might challenge my typical reading experience. The Dominant Animal seemed like just the book to scratch that itch. First of all it's a book of short stories which I'm not typically a fan of. This in and of itself became challenge number one. The short stories contained within were of the 2 and 3 page variety so a lot is packed into 140 pages but ultimately I felt as if I haven't read anything at all. There wasn't much to be gained or rewarded for upon completion. I'm all for experimentation but there has to be something for me to chew on. Something for me to contemplate but these stories mostly just left me scratching my head and wondering what the hell I'm missing.
In all fairness this was not the proper book for me and I knew that and yet requested it anyhow. I'm not going to knock the author because she clearly thinks outside the box and the writing could be mesmerizing at times even while being wholly depressing. I, personally, wouldn't recommend this but other reviewers found far more meaning than I did so if you're interested in something completely different then by all means give this one a shot. For me though .... 2 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and MCD X FSG Originals for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In all fairness this was not the proper book for me and I knew that and yet requested it anyhow. I'm not going to knock the author because she clearly thinks outside the box and the writing could be mesmerizing at times even while being wholly depressing. I, personally, wouldn't recommend this but other reviewers found far more meaning than I did so if you're interested in something completely different then by all means give this one a shot. For me though .... 2 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and MCD X FSG Originals for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
October 29, 2019
Depicting cruelty is not daring or interesting per se, it takes a writer like Ottessa Moshfegh or - all hail the king! - Cormac McCarthy to turn violence and disgust into poetry. Otherwise, cruelty as one of the most primitive human impulses is just boring, and unfortunately, this collection of short stories is a case in point. The slim volume, only 160 pages, contains 40 stories, many of them not more than a scene or an impression. All texts are dire and give the impression that the point of the composition is to capture the depressing randomness of life, and this also means that the stories lack any meaningful build-up or resolution. Employing short, clear sentences, Scanlan successfully avoids anything resembling a lyrical voice or an immersive reading experience.
So yes, you could call that disregard for narrative conventions and readerly expectations daring, but to read one story after the other that throws pointless twists and turns at you while soberly portraying cruelty and indifference is just tedious. The publisher is correct, these stories are "merciless", but have I really felt "unsettled" or even "disturbed"? Nope, mainly, I felt annoyed, because this book is trying so hard to be edgy, but in all its bleakness, it's mainly just bland. It's not unsettling, because the detached depiction of cruelty has no heart - it's cynical, and being a cynic is not only very easy, it also makes for extremely boring company, and this also goes for texts. The depiction of cruelty is only brave when an author dares to feel the pain and to inflict it on her readers.
Many of the stories do meditate on dominance, often referring to dogs - but it has long been established that a pack of dogs does NOT operate on static systems of order and dominance, because dogs as social animals rely on alternating ranks and cooperation depending on the tasks at hand. Of course this isn't a scientific book about the nature of dogs, but that the basic metaphor of the collection is nonsense points at the larger problem: This random assortion of various instances of human cruelty and indifference stands for nothing, there is no deeper truth or meaning behind it, it's one-dimensional and lazy. It's just a failed attempt to be wild and adventurous, but there's no courage in cynical heartlessness.
So yes, you could call that disregard for narrative conventions and readerly expectations daring, but to read one story after the other that throws pointless twists and turns at you while soberly portraying cruelty and indifference is just tedious. The publisher is correct, these stories are "merciless", but have I really felt "unsettled" or even "disturbed"? Nope, mainly, I felt annoyed, because this book is trying so hard to be edgy, but in all its bleakness, it's mainly just bland. It's not unsettling, because the detached depiction of cruelty has no heart - it's cynical, and being a cynic is not only very easy, it also makes for extremely boring company, and this also goes for texts. The depiction of cruelty is only brave when an author dares to feel the pain and to inflict it on her readers.
Many of the stories do meditate on dominance, often referring to dogs - but it has long been established that a pack of dogs does NOT operate on static systems of order and dominance, because dogs as social animals rely on alternating ranks and cooperation depending on the tasks at hand. Of course this isn't a scientific book about the nature of dogs, but that the basic metaphor of the collection is nonsense points at the larger problem: This random assortion of various instances of human cruelty and indifference stands for nothing, there is no deeper truth or meaning behind it, it's one-dimensional and lazy. It's just a failed attempt to be wild and adventurous, but there's no courage in cynical heartlessness.
September 10, 2019
“She woke to a wailing she recognized. The raw cry—it gripped her. It dragged her from bed, down the hall, out the door. She walked quickly toward it, her arms stretched straight ahead. Like the cramp of a missing leg, she felt the old burden of milk in her chest. For a while she could be seen in her white nightgown, but then the dark—it swallowed her.” — “The Hungry Valley”
The stories of Kathryn Scanlan’s The Dominant Animal are, in every sense of the word, heartless. I deeply enjoyed her first book, Aug 9-Fog, so I was especially excited to see how she would perform with something more full-length than the novella she delivered over the summer — this! This is it. It takes true talent to write so succinctly without leaving too much to the imagination, and the esoterica of these tales is nothing short of engrossing. Don’t let its size fool you, this small book packs a big bite with 40 stories — each leaving you more fucked than the last.
What’s most striking about Scanlan’s voice is that it is always changing, from the human to the inanimate. The vessels are typically repressed by their wary circumstances and are fated as victims or villains by each story’s end. While tolerance is the key to survival, Scanlan shows us the mind may not be as malleable as we once thought, that even the conscious must bend to the wills of dormant traumas — sexual abuse, death, abandonment, violence, suffering. Above all, there’s a lingering uneasiness that made this book absolutely unputdownable — the stuff of nightmare fuel.
Menacing and magnetic, Scanlan’s collection signals the arrival of an evil genius. Like the haunting, lyrical air of her contemporaries Maryse Meijer and Carmen Maria Machado, Scanlan’s The Dominant Animal will leave one helluva scar.
Thanks again as always, FSG family, for letting me be an early reader.
If you liked my review, feel free to follow me @parisperusing on Instagram.
The stories of Kathryn Scanlan’s The Dominant Animal are, in every sense of the word, heartless. I deeply enjoyed her first book, Aug 9-Fog, so I was especially excited to see how she would perform with something more full-length than the novella she delivered over the summer — this! This is it. It takes true talent to write so succinctly without leaving too much to the imagination, and the esoterica of these tales is nothing short of engrossing. Don’t let its size fool you, this small book packs a big bite with 40 stories — each leaving you more fucked than the last.
What’s most striking about Scanlan’s voice is that it is always changing, from the human to the inanimate. The vessels are typically repressed by their wary circumstances and are fated as victims or villains by each story’s end. While tolerance is the key to survival, Scanlan shows us the mind may not be as malleable as we once thought, that even the conscious must bend to the wills of dormant traumas — sexual abuse, death, abandonment, violence, suffering. Above all, there’s a lingering uneasiness that made this book absolutely unputdownable — the stuff of nightmare fuel.
Menacing and magnetic, Scanlan’s collection signals the arrival of an evil genius. Like the haunting, lyrical air of her contemporaries Maryse Meijer and Carmen Maria Machado, Scanlan’s The Dominant Animal will leave one helluva scar.
Thanks again as always, FSG family, for letting me be an early reader.
If you liked my review, feel free to follow me @parisperusing on Instagram.
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October 17, 2019Kathryn Scanlan is a master of the everyday mysterious. There are 40 stories in this collection, and it feels like there are secrets under every one of them.
December 19, 2022
Unsettling, uncanny, edgy. Think: something bubbling just under the surface—undercurrents of sexual violence, abandonment, abuse; think super-condensed depictions of everyday cruelty that cut deep enough but not to kill. Think: lots of shifting in your seat.
Each of the 40 stories here is wrought with a brevity indicative of mastery. I enjoyed most, though the collection on the whole is a bit top-heavy (all but two of my favourites were in the first half of the volume). The Dominant Animal is what I wish Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot were. It is what I hope Moshfegh's Lapvona might be. I read it cover to cover, twice.
Each of the 40 stories here is wrought with a brevity indicative of mastery. I enjoyed most, though the collection on the whole is a bit top-heavy (all but two of my favourites were in the first half of the volume). The Dominant Animal is what I wish Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot were. It is what I hope Moshfegh's Lapvona might be. I read it cover to cover, twice.
April 7, 2021
Describing her approach to writing, Kathryn Scanlan has quoted Gary Lutz, saying: “I favor narratives in which the sentence is a complete, portable solitude... the sort of sentence that, even when liberated from its receiving context, impresses itself upon the eye and the ear as a totality, an omnitude, unto itself.”
The Dominant Animal is a collection of forty, very short, stories. Although seemingly unrelated, the consistent theme running through the collection is an unnervingly endemic abuse of power. “The Dominant Animal” being the extended metaphor, but also regularly a more literal means to parse power relationships.
Scanlan’s writing is deftly concise, economical, and sharp. It is minimalism to the point of memory, by which I mean only the most vital and distinguishing features make the cut. As such, we are left with stories with scarcely discernible plots. Instead, we experience fragments of time in non-specific periods and locations, as the ordinary regularly shifts into the uncanny, via language which is refined and tuned to the point of rhythm and palpability.
The prominence of class, portrayals of mundane suburban life, and lean diction exposing the cruelty of man, all echo writers such as Carver, Hemingway, Diane Williams, and even fellow contemporary Emma Cline. But it is the depth of refinement, injection of the grotesque and channelling of the gothic and folktale genres which make The Dominant Animal a uniquely exhilarating read.
On the surface these stories may appear too scarce and abject to derive meaning, but Scanlan’s “inclination is that reduction, compression, silence and absence in a text might enable a largeness to expand in the mind of the reader.”
This is therefore a collection to be read slowly and repeatedly, allowing that largeness to form a window, to what at first might seem alien, but is ultimately a wearily familiar world.
The Dominant Animal is a collection of forty, very short, stories. Although seemingly unrelated, the consistent theme running through the collection is an unnervingly endemic abuse of power. “The Dominant Animal” being the extended metaphor, but also regularly a more literal means to parse power relationships.
Scanlan’s writing is deftly concise, economical, and sharp. It is minimalism to the point of memory, by which I mean only the most vital and distinguishing features make the cut. As such, we are left with stories with scarcely discernible plots. Instead, we experience fragments of time in non-specific periods and locations, as the ordinary regularly shifts into the uncanny, via language which is refined and tuned to the point of rhythm and palpability.
The prominence of class, portrayals of mundane suburban life, and lean diction exposing the cruelty of man, all echo writers such as Carver, Hemingway, Diane Williams, and even fellow contemporary Emma Cline. But it is the depth of refinement, injection of the grotesque and channelling of the gothic and folktale genres which make The Dominant Animal a uniquely exhilarating read.
On the surface these stories may appear too scarce and abject to derive meaning, but Scanlan’s “inclination is that reduction, compression, silence and absence in a text might enable a largeness to expand in the mind of the reader.”
This is therefore a collection to be read slowly and repeatedly, allowing that largeness to form a window, to what at first might seem alien, but is ultimately a wearily familiar world.
January 16, 2022
Understated lil' flash fictions that felt a little too cloaked and held back at times. Other times, her sentences stirred a soft eerie buzz in my brain. If you love the literary journal Noon (like I do!) you'll enjoy these odd scenes. It all felt kind of like: show me you write for Noon without showing me you write for Noon.
January 23, 2021
Someone in my Twitter feed was bemoaning the state of literature and a commenter asked her what book she loved and she said this one. And now I feel sorry for her.
January 29, 2020
I hadn't read any of Scanlan's work before this, but I loved the cover and really enjoy short story collections so I thought I would give it a shot. Though I was captivated by a handful of these stories, a lot of them fell flat for me. I admire her precision and how she can start to make a story come alive, even with no names or identifiers of any kind, but these types of stories are not my favorite. Some I felt as if I wasn't fully understanding them, like they were about something other than what I was imagining in my head. And that's okay - I think that her work is no doubt brilliant - it is just not the kind of thing that I can say I love fully. I think that there are a lot of people who will rave about this collection, and it wholeheartedly deserves the praise it receives.
March 16, 2020
A mixed bag for me, I'll be generous and round up to 3-stars but on the whole, most of these stories were too bleak and mean-spirited for me to really find much enjoyment in them. Kathryn Scanlan does seem to have a way with words and an ability to make you cringe, so I guess there's that.
October 8, 2019
Caveat: my copy of this was an ARC from Little Island Press before whatever happened to the publisher happened and this book wasn't released by them. I cannot, therefore, be sure that exact content remains the same.
The Dominant Animal, by Kathryn Scanlan, is a collection of thirty-six short stories portraying ordinary if atypical aspects of the lives of fictional Americans. There is a detached and disturbing undercurrent as individuals’ private moments are observed. The raw imagery appears somewhat shocking in our carefully curated and sanitised social world.
A Deformity Story is set during a lunch where friends are gathered in a restaurant and the narrator wishes to share an anecdote. How often in social situations are participants performing to the crowd?
“I had a story I wanted to tell. I had half an ear on the conversation but mostly was thinking of how I would enter it.”
People and the things they interact with are presented as grotesques, as, to conclude, is the behaviour of the friends.
Colonial Revival condenses a life into three pages. A man returns from a war, builds a business and home, marries, has children. The hollowness and futility of what many would aspire to and be admired for is brought to the fore by the lack of emotion. There is kindness and there is death – and time moves inexorably on.
Surroundings are described and, at times, enjoyed but many of the lives are lived without apparent beauty. Humans encountered are disturbing, their distasteful aspects presented unadorned and without obvious recourse. There are moments of horror – one story includes the sexual abuse of a baby – but even the more mundane lack hope of uplifting. And yet, the characters mostly accept their lot. It is, perhaps, this reader who looked for succour.
To give an example, descriptions of foodstuffs are of bagged, wet, congealed, oily concoctions. Taste is rarely mentioned. There appears little desire to create pleasure. The characters are mostly insular and focused on self.
Small Pink Female describes what its narrator considers a typical date.
“I’ve courted in the traditional fashion, of course – coming together on evenings arranged in advance, in the dark, on padded seats, facing the huge brash rectangle, or else in simulated candlelight, knees tucked beneath a drooping white cloth, enduring protracted sessions of mastication and, later, abbreviated fornication.”
Where is the excitement? the potential for fun?
Salad Days describes a relationship, its beginnings where everything, however ordinary, feels like a prize. Inevitably this cannot last. Dissatisfaction leads to violence.
Within these pages parents dislike their children and children their parents. Couples tolerate derided behaviour and take part in activities they do not enjoy. Those who manage to escape rarely find anything better. In Bait-And-Switch a couple carelessly destroy the comfort they have unexpectedly been granted.
The subjects may appear hollow and dark but there is a breathtaking honesty in the layers of meaning, however challenging this is to absorb. I was left feeling bereft at the humanity presented, yet in awe of the skills apparent in the author’s writing.
The Dominant Animal, by Kathryn Scanlan, is a collection of thirty-six short stories portraying ordinary if atypical aspects of the lives of fictional Americans. There is a detached and disturbing undercurrent as individuals’ private moments are observed. The raw imagery appears somewhat shocking in our carefully curated and sanitised social world.
A Deformity Story is set during a lunch where friends are gathered in a restaurant and the narrator wishes to share an anecdote. How often in social situations are participants performing to the crowd?
“I had a story I wanted to tell. I had half an ear on the conversation but mostly was thinking of how I would enter it.”
People and the things they interact with are presented as grotesques, as, to conclude, is the behaviour of the friends.
Colonial Revival condenses a life into three pages. A man returns from a war, builds a business and home, marries, has children. The hollowness and futility of what many would aspire to and be admired for is brought to the fore by the lack of emotion. There is kindness and there is death – and time moves inexorably on.
Surroundings are described and, at times, enjoyed but many of the lives are lived without apparent beauty. Humans encountered are disturbing, their distasteful aspects presented unadorned and without obvious recourse. There are moments of horror – one story includes the sexual abuse of a baby – but even the more mundane lack hope of uplifting. And yet, the characters mostly accept their lot. It is, perhaps, this reader who looked for succour.
To give an example, descriptions of foodstuffs are of bagged, wet, congealed, oily concoctions. Taste is rarely mentioned. There appears little desire to create pleasure. The characters are mostly insular and focused on self.
Small Pink Female describes what its narrator considers a typical date.
“I’ve courted in the traditional fashion, of course – coming together on evenings arranged in advance, in the dark, on padded seats, facing the huge brash rectangle, or else in simulated candlelight, knees tucked beneath a drooping white cloth, enduring protracted sessions of mastication and, later, abbreviated fornication.”
Where is the excitement? the potential for fun?
Salad Days describes a relationship, its beginnings where everything, however ordinary, feels like a prize. Inevitably this cannot last. Dissatisfaction leads to violence.
Within these pages parents dislike their children and children their parents. Couples tolerate derided behaviour and take part in activities they do not enjoy. Those who manage to escape rarely find anything better. In Bait-And-Switch a couple carelessly destroy the comfort they have unexpectedly been granted.
The subjects may appear hollow and dark but there is a breathtaking honesty in the layers of meaning, however challenging this is to absorb. I was left feeling bereft at the humanity presented, yet in awe of the skills apparent in the author’s writing.
November 30, 2020
Think Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son and the work of Gary Lutz, then lower your expectations significantly. This didn't work for me at all. For any interesting metaphor or image, you were rewarded with two awful ones. Punch yet drifting, unanchored narratives, chockfull of dying pets or symbolic animal familiars, characters who are always hungry or eating without limits, characters who wilfully refuse to tidy up around them so that their houses are squalid. But none of these repeated motifs were to any purpose I could see. There was an interesting idea of a character picking up newly born kittens too soon so that the mother cat rejected them and killed them, which was echoed in a completely different story about a couple who live off free vouchers (another recurring theme) and live a nice old life on freebies and doormen tuning a blind eye, but it all unravels when they oversleep one morning so the vouchers can't buy anything, their favourite casino chef has moved on and their favourite food lost from the menu and the golf course cashier also replaced so they can no longer play rounds for free. That was probably the best story but I don't even know if it deliberately alluded back to the mother cat in the other story or it was just serendipity.
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odo_3...
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odo_3...
July 22, 2023
[the dominant animal | review]
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“But I’ll miss that place, and I hope I never see it again.”
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🌟1.5/5🌟 Maybe I just didn’t “get it”… I saw many reviews complaining this book was too “cruel”,I didn't have that issue, it was just too boring. There were maybe 5 stories total that I enjoyed but the rest just tried too hard to be artsy. I think this is an instance where the blurb and cover art made this book seem much cooler than it actually is. I guess the good thing about flash fiction is that you can get through each story quickly - the problem is that there were just sooo many.
•
“But I’ll miss that place, and I hope I never see it again.”
•
🌟1.5/5🌟 Maybe I just didn’t “get it”… I saw many reviews complaining this book was too “cruel”,I didn't have that issue, it was just too boring. There were maybe 5 stories total that I enjoyed but the rest just tried too hard to be artsy. I think this is an instance where the blurb and cover art made this book seem much cooler than it actually is. I guess the good thing about flash fiction is that you can get through each story quickly - the problem is that there were just sooo many.
February 3, 2024
I loved these dark, strange stories. A little disturbing, threatening even, and unpredictable. Sometimes violent. They made me edgy. Quite different from Kick the Latch. They made me think of Jane Bowles and Joy Williams. They were quietly thrilling. I’m a big Scanlan fan now, and will be reading whatever she does next.
April 19, 2020
Some of these stories are among the best flash I’ve read, but many others are too opaque and seemingly random for me to love the book as a whole. One important consistency, which sets Scanlan apart is her cold, bright use of language. This is a book that makes you want to write.
August 26, 2024
This makes me sad because I really like the writing style but I literally didn’t like a single story and there’s like 25 to choose from (some of them are literally half a page long)
June 21, 2021
I read The Dominant Animal haltingly -- one or two stories at a time -- and I can't decide whether I did it the right way or whether I should have read them all at once in a single cloudy afternoon. On one hand, perhaps reading it all at once would have let the mood fester in a more visceral way. But on the other hand, the slow pace allowed each single story to linger before being replaced with the next. I could slow down and reread and let each one sink in, especially because, despite their brevity, these stories are HEAVY.
This is how I read poetry as well, and this collection does work a bit like poetry. These stories are sharp and concise and deliberate about their grammatical structures and punctuation. (We all love a good em dash.) In Granta, she says she tries "to write a sentence as unbudging and fully itself as some object sitting on a shelf," and I find that to be true. She also does away with conventional plot expectations and, instead, builds a premise -- or sometimes just a mood, really -- and then builds to a turn, much like a poet.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone compare this collection to Gutshot by Amelia Gray. Like the stories in Gutshot, these are peppered with grossness and the threat of (usually masculine) violence.
SOME FAVORITES (out of 40!):
- Shh: "Shh, said the surgeon. Over my face, his gloved hand hung -- you could even say it twitched. Then, with his fingertips, he pushed the lids of my eyes shut. You've seen this move before -- some man, overcome with shame, unable, for selfish reasons, to look at what he's done" (35).
- The Imprecation: "The man carried the old unit out the front door and down to the curb. The hole in the wall brightened the small, dim room -- there was a fresh, cheerful feeling. A sense of serenity came from some glowing, floating dust. / But then the man came back and jammed the new unit into the hole. He turned it on with a remote control. Within a few minutes the room was cool, but it couldn't help her because she was dead" (52).
- Ta-da!: "Slowly, from the shrub's thick, dark leaves, a bare arm emerged. Then a denim-clad leg struggled forth, attached to a foot housed in a white athletic shoe. It was clear by now that a difficult birth was under way. / I've always been a sucker for origin stories, so I held my breath and waited to see how this one might begin" (105).
This is how I read poetry as well, and this collection does work a bit like poetry. These stories are sharp and concise and deliberate about their grammatical structures and punctuation. (We all love a good em dash.) In Granta, she says she tries "to write a sentence as unbudging and fully itself as some object sitting on a shelf," and I find that to be true. She also does away with conventional plot expectations and, instead, builds a premise -- or sometimes just a mood, really -- and then builds to a turn, much like a poet.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone compare this collection to Gutshot by Amelia Gray. Like the stories in Gutshot, these are peppered with grossness and the threat of (usually masculine) violence.
"His boyhood mornings had been sharp and bright. They'd woken him like a poke. He would pack a sandwich and run to the woods. He'd stay all day. Home was no place to be. He watched the ducks and deer and squirrels and songbirds. He wanted to touch them all -- so he brought his rifle" (29).I liked these more. I don't know why. They were certainly less funny. But I think they felt more realized and, somehow, authentic. Like, I didn't feel that she was trying to upset me just to upset me.
"I lifted the shovel above my head and held it there. I picture the person who could do this -- someone stronger than I was. This person would hit the cat's head -- hard -- with the flat back of the shovel. If a second hit was needed, or a third, fourth, fifth, this person -- let's be clear, this man -- would ignore the blood" (110).
"Handled properly, a good stone would jug happily, prettily, across the surface until exhausted. As the men understood it, the trick was to hold the thing lightly -- tenderly -- and then, with a swift jerk, send it spinning" (126).
SOME FAVORITES (out of 40!):
- Shh: "Shh, said the surgeon. Over my face, his gloved hand hung -- you could even say it twitched. Then, with his fingertips, he pushed the lids of my eyes shut. You've seen this move before -- some man, overcome with shame, unable, for selfish reasons, to look at what he's done" (35).
- The Imprecation: "The man carried the old unit out the front door and down to the curb. The hole in the wall brightened the small, dim room -- there was a fresh, cheerful feeling. A sense of serenity came from some glowing, floating dust. / But then the man came back and jammed the new unit into the hole. He turned it on with a remote control. Within a few minutes the room was cool, but it couldn't help her because she was dead" (52).
- Ta-da!: "Slowly, from the shrub's thick, dark leaves, a bare arm emerged. Then a denim-clad leg struggled forth, attached to a foot housed in a white athletic shoe. It was clear by now that a difficult birth was under way. / I've always been a sucker for origin stories, so I held my breath and waited to see how this one might begin" (105).
March 7, 2020
This mercurial collection of short stories is infinitely readable. I devoured the whole thing in less than a day. I loved the author's other book Aug 9 - Fog and so had high expectations for this one, I was not disappointed. I think that similar to Aug 9, The Dominant Animal is the sort of book that you could pick up when ever you need a literary or creative shot of energy. Flip to whichever pages your finger happens between and read the short passage that is there. The writing is so tight and fluid, and the stories so creative, bizarre and potent, that you will be inspired to either keep reading or to go off and fulfill your own creative endeavours. Thank you so much to NetGalley and to the publishers for providing me with this ARC. I will be recommending it to everyone I know that enjoys well-written fiction.
December 29, 2023
Strange little book, maybe the most original voice I've encountered since the first time I read Kafka or Borges, that kind of delight for readers. 1/2/3-page stories can be disturbing, leave you wanting more or sometimes, less, happy to end a story to see what the next story brings. Scanlan writes about not-nice people, desperate people, sad people 'stuck in life'. But there is hope, at least I found hope, in wanting to pay attention to people the way she does. I'm eager to read more of her.
September 2, 2025
The striking cover art on the paperback piqued my interest, but I couldn’t force myself to finish these short stories - most of the ones I read had 0 point at all, nothing notable or memorable about them. Would not recommend.
October 25, 2019
A truly extraordinary accomplishment.
September 1, 2020
Very literature... Very profound. You have to make no sense in your writing to be profound.
February 7, 2020
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"His tolerance for looking at the unattainable was so much lower than mine, which felt boundless, untested. It was the only thing I wanted to see."
Scanlan’s collection casts an errie fog over the ordinary. There are people remembering cold parents who have died and a dog who abandoned love and home for another family. Men with groping, rough hands and a girl whose ‘curiosity often led her into troublesome situations’, and doesn’t seem too worry much over the danger, though she should. A couple who lives in cramped quarters slobbering over the abundance of wealth the affluent take for granted, people trying to sink themselves into death and a mother who watches a family friend with a hawks eye around her daughters.
Threats always lurk, either from within or without, beasts not entirely animal. Human beings are at their worst or alerted to predators in these tales. Some are liars, like the Master Framer and some men will never be rescued, because how can you save someone from what goes on in their own head, as in The Rescued Man.
The Poker was an interesting title, because what do females do but dodge poking and prodding from birth? The mother isn’t allowed to feel her pain, she is ‘greedy’ with her baby girl when protecting her from the arms of a ‘family friend holding her child wrong’, and nothing in the world, not even pills can keep her little girls safe from the violence beyond the door and the world’s flippant response to a woman’s reaction to insults and injury. In Mother’s Teeth a woman cares for her needy, sick mother, though really after her childhood owes her nothing.
As in The Candidate, a person is an animal among the domesticated of our species. Sometimes even a family dog can have more pedigree, ‘expensive heritage’ than us, and we are the sticky, messy animal never to be as sleek and refined as others.
The stories are both ordinary and strange, and the people in the tales are just trying to ‘live’. Oh, it hurt, something I did nearly cost you your life, well just like the woman in The Poker was told, ‘You survived didn’t you?’ As if that’s enough. My favorites were The Poker and The Rescued Man, in fact I the latter would make an interesting novel. I didn’t love all of them, but Kathryn Scanlan excels is in digging through the hum of the average, ordinary days and it’s people; sometimes finding things to abhor about them or admire.
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
MCD x FSG Originals
"His tolerance for looking at the unattainable was so much lower than mine, which felt boundless, untested. It was the only thing I wanted to see."
Scanlan’s collection casts an errie fog over the ordinary. There are people remembering cold parents who have died and a dog who abandoned love and home for another family. Men with groping, rough hands and a girl whose ‘curiosity often led her into troublesome situations’, and doesn’t seem too worry much over the danger, though she should. A couple who lives in cramped quarters slobbering over the abundance of wealth the affluent take for granted, people trying to sink themselves into death and a mother who watches a family friend with a hawks eye around her daughters.
Threats always lurk, either from within or without, beasts not entirely animal. Human beings are at their worst or alerted to predators in these tales. Some are liars, like the Master Framer and some men will never be rescued, because how can you save someone from what goes on in their own head, as in The Rescued Man.
The Poker was an interesting title, because what do females do but dodge poking and prodding from birth? The mother isn’t allowed to feel her pain, she is ‘greedy’ with her baby girl when protecting her from the arms of a ‘family friend holding her child wrong’, and nothing in the world, not even pills can keep her little girls safe from the violence beyond the door and the world’s flippant response to a woman’s reaction to insults and injury. In Mother’s Teeth a woman cares for her needy, sick mother, though really after her childhood owes her nothing.
As in The Candidate, a person is an animal among the domesticated of our species. Sometimes even a family dog can have more pedigree, ‘expensive heritage’ than us, and we are the sticky, messy animal never to be as sleek and refined as others.
The stories are both ordinary and strange, and the people in the tales are just trying to ‘live’. Oh, it hurt, something I did nearly cost you your life, well just like the woman in The Poker was told, ‘You survived didn’t you?’ As if that’s enough. My favorites were The Poker and The Rescued Man, in fact I the latter would make an interesting novel. I didn’t love all of them, but Kathryn Scanlan excels is in digging through the hum of the average, ordinary days and it’s people; sometimes finding things to abhor about them or admire.
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
MCD x FSG Originals
March 12, 2021
“I stood at the window with her hair in my hand. I closed my fingers around it. I could hear her breath near my ear, though I’d heard her breath stop. My insides haven’t worked right since. Nor my brain, either.
I watched the man drive away in his glossy, valuable car and prayed he might be met with some misfortune. Due to a major failing - the pathological poverty of my imagination - I could not call to mind anything more specific than that.”
For me, the depiction of the depressing nature of standard life, the lack of regard for narrative voice and the depiction of all things as vague and underdeveloped was surprisingly captivating. A series of “slice of life” stories with a haunting twist this collection really did it for me as a person. Something about the uncanny tone and elegant gore scratched an itch in my brain.
I watched the man drive away in his glossy, valuable car and prayed he might be met with some misfortune. Due to a major failing - the pathological poverty of my imagination - I could not call to mind anything more specific than that.”
For me, the depiction of the depressing nature of standard life, the lack of regard for narrative voice and the depiction of all things as vague and underdeveloped was surprisingly captivating. A series of “slice of life” stories with a haunting twist this collection really did it for me as a person. Something about the uncanny tone and elegant gore scratched an itch in my brain.
January 25, 2025
2.75
90% scenes, but good scenes. I just wish they all had a little more to give, it’s hard to even conjure a theme out of a few of the singlepagers. I am intrigued by her writing and am curious of what a longer work of hers would look like. I don’t really know what else to say about stories that were so short. It was fairly easy reading without thinking about ambiguity.
Favorites: The First Whiffs of Spring, Florida Is For Lovers, Men of the Woods, BJ, Derland, The Dominant Animal, Design for a Carpet, Yet You Turn to the Man, Master Framer, The Poker
90% scenes, but good scenes. I just wish they all had a little more to give, it’s hard to even conjure a theme out of a few of the singlepagers. I am intrigued by her writing and am curious of what a longer work of hers would look like. I don’t really know what else to say about stories that were so short. It was fairly easy reading without thinking about ambiguity.
Favorites: The First Whiffs of Spring, Florida Is For Lovers, Men of the Woods, BJ, Derland, The Dominant Animal, Design for a Carpet, Yet You Turn to the Man, Master Framer, The Poker
February 10, 2021
I absolutely loved this book. There's an overarching style and clear themes across the 40 very short stories, but each one really stands alone too. Although it's a short book, it apparently took 12 years or so to build up the body of work, and I found I needed to ration these mysterious, original, dark and sometimes funny stories, and reread and review them, so I could process everything properly. But overall, an exciting young writer and a very distinctive book.
April 20, 2020
The Dominant Animal orders together slices of flash fiction that mete out assorted cruelties to young'uns and creatures both deserving and otherwise. Finely tuned throughout, there's a singular humour at play here that could maybe account for the polarised reviews.
April 18, 2021
U većini priča autorica kao da se trudila biti što nerazumljivija.
Najbolje priče: Happy Wife, Happy Life, Mother's Teeth, The Hungry Valley, BJ, Salad Days, Live A Little, Design for a Carpet, The Old Mill, The Poker.
Najbolje priče: Happy Wife, Happy Life, Mother's Teeth, The Hungry Valley, BJ, Salad Days, Live A Little, Design for a Carpet, The Old Mill, The Poker.
June 21, 2025
Less a short story and more a prose poetry collection. Lots of hits and some misses, but even the misses are pretty darn good. Scanlan’s writing has this delicious textural quality to it that helps pack her 1-2 page stories with a great punch.
November 10, 2020
4.5 All of these stories were really tightly crafted looks into people’s lives and their relationships with one another and animals, AS animals. I really enjoyed the whole book and want to try more by the author. I found myself rereading sentences and reading very slowly for the full impact of each word. Also have to say I really liked the book cover design on this. The way the painting was cropped is subtle and well realized.
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