Swansong

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Pub Date Jan 25 2018 | Archive Date Feb 24 2018

Description

In this stunningly assured, immersive and vividly atmospheric first novel, a young woman comes face-to-face with the volatile, haunted wilderness of the Scottish Highlands.

Polly Vaughan is trying to escape the ravaging guilt of a disturbing incident in London by heading north to the Scottish Highlands. As soon as she arrives, this spirited, funny, alert young woman goes looking for drink, drugs and sex – finding them all quickly, and unsatisfactorily, with the barman in the only pub. She also finds a fresh kind of fear, alone in this eerie, myth-drenched landscape. Increasingly prone to visions or visitations – floating white shapes in the waters of the loch or in the woods – she is terrified and fascinated by a man she came across in the forest on her first evening, apparently tearing apart a bird. Who is this strange loner? And what is his sinister secret?

Kerry Andrew is a fresh new voice in British fiction; one that comes from a deep understanding of the folk songs, mythologies and oral traditions of these islands. Her powerful metaphoric language gives Swansong a charged, hallucinatory quality that is unique, uncanny and deeply disquieting.

In this stunningly assured, immersive and vividly atmospheric first novel, a young woman comes face-to-face with the volatile, haunted wilderness of the Scottish Highlands.

Polly Vaughan is trying to...


A Note From the Publisher

Kerry Andrew is a London-based composer, performer, writer and educator. She has a PhD in Composition from the University of York and has won three British Composer Awards. As a composer, she specialises in experimental vocal and choral music, music-theatre and community music. Her alternative-folk album Hawk to the Hunting Gone, a collection of avian folk-songs re-interpreted, came out in 2014 under the banner of You Are Wolf. A second album, based on freshwater folklore, will be released in 2018.

Kerry Andrew is a London-based composer, performer, writer and educator. She has a PhD in Composition from the University of York and has won three British Composer Awards. As a composer, she...


Advance Praise

'Swansong is the real thing, right from the start: spiky, strange and contemporary, but always with a dark undertow of myth and folklore tugging at its telling. The voice jags at you, and the plot grips: this is a brilliant novel by a writer - and musician - of frankly alarming talent.'
Robert Macfarlane

'Like the great storytelling tradition it extends so elegantly, Swansong is all about transformation, whether through love, rage, fear or desperation: a chilling tour de force that draws the old gods and demons from the land, and lets them loose in the most unexpected ways. It is also an utterly compelling psychological thriller, a book you will simply refuse to put down until the last piece of its extraordinary puzzle falls into place. Essential reading.'
John Burnside

'Swansong is the real thing, right from the start: spiky, strange and contemporary, but always with a dark undertow of myth and folklore tugging at its telling. The voice jags at you, and the plot...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781911214229
PRICE £14.99 (GBP)
PAGES 352

Average rating from 32 members


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