Swansong
Contents ( 21)
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kerry Andrew is a London-based composer, performer, and author. She has won four British Composer Awards and is best known for her experimental vocal, choral and music-theatre work, often based around themes of community, landscape and myth. She has released two albums with her band You Are Wolf: Hawk to the Hunting Gone (2014), a collection of avian folk-songs re-interpreted, and Keld (2018), inspired by freshwater folklore. She made her short story debut on BBC Radio 4 in 2014 and she was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award. She is currently working on her second novel.
For my little brother, Daniel
Come all you young fellows
That handle a gun
Beware of night rambling
By the setting of the sun
1
My breath is the loudest thing. And a thundering in my ears like a war drum.
On the evenings when rain and sun are tangled up together, I relive it. As if it were the first time.
The thundering is my bones, thumping either side of me, arcing strangely. The ground bumps and blurs and the sea-loch tilts, slipping away far below. My tongue curls in on itself and there’s that strange cry, brassy and elastic. It is mine. Me.
I am a girl, and I am flying.
Then, as always, a fisting blow. The pain in my breast. The ground see-saws.