Why read Kick the Latch?

Book cover of Kick the Latch

Book description

Kathryn Scanlan's Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc 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,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Kick the Latch as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jess Bowers

Author

I’ve never read anything quite like Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch. Crafted from interviews conducted with a woman named Sonia who’s worked in America’s itinerant and hardscrabble horse racing industry all her life, it’s not quite a memoir, but it reads like one.

I love how Scanlan doesn’t waste time explaining jargon or inserting herself as an interlocutor—reading this book feels like meeting Sonia herself without any intermediary or filter. It’s impossible to tell what’s direct from the interview transcripts and what’s Scanlan’s artistic intervention because all of it rings so true.

That’s what makes this book so fascinating to…

From Jess' 3 favorite reads in 2023.