06/01/2025
MICRO REVIEW: Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan, New Directions, 2022
I learned more about the backside of horse tracks from this book than from any other source, and for this alone, I loved it. I also loved the voice of the book, which is narrated by a woman called Sonia. Sonia is typical of people who work with racehorses, who ask not what the job can do for them—the work is nomadic, incredibly dangerous, and in all but a few cases, doesn’t pay even close to a living wage—but what they can do for the job. They do it for the love of horses.
This book is built from slender chapters, Sonia narrating her experiences in first person in a colloquial, talkative style, to the effect that you feel as if you’re simply listening to an expert, someone who has groomed and trained horses all her life, telling the kinds of stories you’d expect to hear—about the scrappiness a person has to display just to make it in that business, the inevitable injuries, rivalries, dangers and yes, friendships. Those who choose this life are in constant danger of injury, of losing their positions and other financial hardships, to the extent there’s no sense of a future, only survival, and the effect is riveting, nail-biting.
The author of Kick the Latch based the novel on interviews she conducted with “Sonia,” a real person whose real name isn’t disclosed. The book’s publisher seems to go a little too far out of its way to shut down any objections a reader might have to how the book was written, noting that the book is a novel that, while based on interviews, was carefully crafted by its writer. Still, I had a weird feeling in many places that what I was reading amounted to basically a transcription—the voice of the narrator was so strong I couldn’t help but feel that much of the book was directly quoted. After I finished the book I retreated into a little think tank in my mind about how art is created, how much of any story is invented and crafted versus observed or “taken,” why some books credit their subjects as authors or co-authors (“as told to” and the like) and others don’t. I suppose it’s none of my business, but I kept wondering if Sonia was compensated in any way for her story. If I learned anything from the book, I’d have to conclude probably not. But I still loved the book and will remember Sonia’s character for a long time.
—Christie Hodgen, editor-in-chief, New Letters
