American author Kathryn Scanlan has won this year’s Gordon Burn prize for her “desperately consumable” novel about horse training.
Kick the Latch is based on a series of interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer from the midwest. The novel is “a thundering achievement, liberated from hard lines of genre and form by a laser-focus on not just excavation, but building of voice,” said judging chair and journalist Terri White.
Scanlan said it is “a thrill and an honour to receive this prize, which is unique in its recognition of work that plays with form, style and genre”.
She was announced as the winner at a ceremony in Newcastle, Burn’s home city, on Thursday. She wins £10,000 and the opportunity to go on a writing retreat at Burn’s cottage in Berwickshire.
“In a series of vignettes drawn from transcribed conversations between Scanlan and Sonia, the reader encounters dilapidated trailers, racetracks, backs of vans, long hours, brutality, beauty and joy,” wrote Wendy Erskine in her Guardian review of the novel. “Sonia’s voice is unsentimental and humane, alert to absurdity and human frailty.”
The prize recognises fiction and nonfiction books that “push boundaries, cross genres and challenge readers’ expectations” and that show an “affinity with the spirit and sensibility” of Burn’s “literary methods”. Burn, who died in 2009, wrote 10 books including the novels Alma Cogan and Fullalove.
“Kick the Latch is a rare beast, setting out with a premise that feels neatly bordered but revealing itself almost immediately to be a desperately consumable piece of literature, pushing boundaries in terms of form and structure but never becoming inaccessible,” said judge and journalist Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff.
Los Angeles-based Scanlan’s first novel, Aug 9 – Fog, was a reworking of an elderly woman’s diary found at an estate auction. Her short story collection, The Dominant Animal, was published in 2020.
Judge and author Sheena Patel said that Kick the Latch is a “remarkable novel” of “tender, sparse and muscular” prose. “A worthy winner for this prize, you all need to read it.”
Kick the Latch was chosen over six other shortlisted titles: Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll, If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, Wifedom by Anna Funder, O Brother by John Niven, Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan and Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq.
“The choice of subject, the method, the execution – it was all perfect in a book that deserves to be on record as an award-winner,” said judge and journalist Andrew Hankinson.
Previous winners of the prize include Benjamin Myers, Peter Pomerantsev and Hanif Abdurraqib. Last year, Preti Taneja won for her examination of the 2019 London Bridge terror attack, Aftermath.
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan (Daunt Books, £9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
