In my experience, the starting points of novels lie years, often decades, before the moment when they start to coagulate into words on a page. For The Northern Clemency it was the memory, both exact and tantalisingly too complex for reconstruction, of a playground game.
On this Tuesday morning, in the intensive care unit at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, west of the city, all that Father Connors knew about the patient was his name, and that his family had called for a priest.
He had a clear plastic bag with a cotton ball containing a few drops of holy oil. He carried a photocopy of pages from a liturgical book.
At 10:18 a.m., he slid open the door. He walked over to the bed, careful to avoid the tubes on the ground.
He stretched out his hand, and began to pray.
These 40 very short stories by the American author Kathryn Scanlan inhabit a world of human failure. Families dissolve through vagrant desire and inner disconnection. Lives are shaped by ordinary neglect: of spouses, of children and of selves. Relations between people and other animals are contingent, chancy and cruel; bodies and selves fail to cohere, and pleasure cannot sustain either itself or any meaning. Deaths are mere passings, with little weight or consequence. And yet The Dominant Animal is a deeply enjoyable book.
Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?