Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan – #ABookADayInMay – Day 23

At the end of Kick the Latch (2022) by Kathryn Scanlan, there is quite a curious note from the author. She writes: Kick the Latch is based on interviews recorded in person and by phone in 2018, 2020, and 2021. With Sonia’s permission, I transcribed those recordings and used them to write this book, which is a work of fiction. My gratitude to Sonia – and to my mother, who introduced us – is profound. I don’t remember reading any of the many reviews that circulated about this book a couple of years ago, but I’m sure they’d all have highlighted this curious mixture of fiction and non-fiction. If the main character is called Sonia, sharing her experiences in the first person, where does the real Sonia end and the fictional one begin? The novel – if such it is – is told in many vignettes, or extremely short chapters. They are broadly in chronological order, from her early childhood through her career as a horse trainer, with a slightly unexpected addendum of life working in a prison at the…