A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan
A collection of skilfully written short stories in which the beauty of imagination meets the inevitable harshness of life, A Portable Shelter is the latest offering from Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers and The Rental Heart and Other Fairy Tales.
In the peaceful coastal surroundings of their cottage in the north of Scotland, Liska and Ruth spend their time telling stories to their unborn baby and sharing both memories and life lessons. Their passionate voices intertwine to introduce figures from their past. The narrative transitions are sometimes obscure yet meaningful and often emotional. Domestic werewolves, wicked witches, bears and dragons are just a few of the characters populating a world of the fantastic, yet one imbued with memory, pure reality and, occasionally, the sadness of life experience.
Bittersweet, nostalgic and often sublime, these appear to be fragments of life more than happy-ending fairytales. ‘Truths wrapped up in stories’; that is the precious gift the parents-to-be are offering to their future child. Logan blends themes of mythology, symbolism, family, loss and change in these tales, each one accompanied by an illustration from award-winning artist Liz Myhill.
Selected for its undeniable literary merit, A Portable Shelter was produced with the assistance of Creative Scotland’s Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship, which aims to promote talented writers and literary organisations in Scotland.
Out now via Vintage, originally published by The Association for Scottish Literary Studies