Each is a wonder, pickled in her crystalline idiom and cured under her brutal, astonishing wit.’ Ottessa Moshfegh ‘Christine Schutt is already easily among the liveliest stylists of our time, and these eleven stories prove we ain’t seen nothing yet. Schutt’s haunting yet lyrical words linger long after the final page.’ Claire Vaye Watkins ‘With terse sentences that read like poetry, Schutt strips each scene of excess context and cuts to the heart of the moment. ‘Shot through with Woolf’s lyrical, restless spirit.’ Please read her new book, Pure Hollywood.'

'Christine Schutt is one of my shining lighthouses. ‘Her sentences never waste a phrase or even a word.’ Lauren Groff This is a book that pretends to be unassuming only to explode in your hands.‘The stories in this collection evade easy capture – but in reading, isn’t the pursuit part of the pleasure? Schutt’s style – in which words crash together musically, the focus shifts and dialogue seems to take even the characters by surprise – means that the qualities come out best on a slow rereading.’ With equal parts unease and delight, I felt as if I were wandering through strangers' homes, seeing their private faces, listening in on their hushed or clipped or pleading conversations. Kathryn Scanlan's The Dominant Animal is a collection full of bright, weird, funny, bizarre yet familiar vignettes, each casting its own shadow. Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

These stories dazzle like bright chips of mica agitated in the sun, but go on to reverberate against the world around you for days after you put the book down. Christine Schutt, author of Pure Hollywoodīeautiful stories, carefully composed and balanced on the knife-edge of language as it begins to cut into the all-too-human. T he stories turn into poems, the wind blows through them and “scatters” us. The stories in The Dominant Animal are not cuddly the dog jaws the baby like a bone and humans, just as easily, gnaw at animals and other humans. Kathryn Scanlan whittles sentences into weapons. Gary Lutz, author of The Complete Gary Lutz The truths of our human affliction divulged in these icily precise, immaculately impolite, genius-spooked stories will undo you for your own good. Kathryn Scanlan comes to us as an oracle when we have never before been so desperately in need.

Christine schutt pure hollywood