4.5*

Kerry Andrew is a musician with three British Composer Awards to her name (*four* as of the 6th December, 2017). She has written choral works which subtly subvert the tradition. As her alter-ego You Are Wolf she (re)interprets folk songs in a contemporary, electronica-tinged idiom. Andrew's first novel, Swansong, is inspired by a folk ballad and shares some of the concerns and methods of her musical projects.

The novel's feisty protagonist and narrator is Polly Vaughan, an English literature undergraduate who, by her own admission, is more into booze, drugs and sex than into literary theory. After she experiences a disturbing incident in London, Polly joins her mother Lottie on an extended holiday in the Western Scottish Highlands. Polly hopes that this will help ease her feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Plans, however, soon go awry. For a start, her attempts to build new friendships and relationships seem to fail miserably. Moreover, the natural environment, beautiful and wild as it is, also comes across as decidedly uncanny. Right on her arrival she spots a strange man pulling a bird apart in the dead of night. And as the days roll on, she starts to have increasingly strange and unsettling visions which cannot be easily explained away as the effects of weed on a heavy conscience. Could something otherworldly really going on?

What makes the style of this novel particularly distinctive is the stark contrast between the fresh, contemporary (and sweary) narrative voice and the elemental, mythical and timeless symbolism which underpins the story. This is not the only dichotomy present in the novel. Indeed, the book often presents us with opposites which turn out to be closer to each other than may be obvious at first glance. "Dead / Not Dead", the mantra which Polly repeats to herself, starts off as an expression of guilt and, by the end of the novel, attracts a deeper meaning. There are similar contrasts between the urban and the natural, the human and the animal, the old and the new.

Andrew also manages to combine seemingly disparate genres. This is, at heart, a supernatural novel, a reworking of a timeless myth. But it also has elements of the psychological thriller, the crime story and the Bildungsroman. It is also a nature novel where the landscape itself becomes a central character. Somehow, it all manages to gel.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is that sometimes the metaphors pile on top of each other, giving the impression that the author is trying too hard to come up with an unusual or striking image. To be fair, however, Polly is herself a whimsical literature student and so the unconventional narrative voice is in character.

What I do know is that when I finished Swansong, I suffered withdrawal symptoms, which does not often happen to me. That is when I realised how much I enjoyed this eerie but beguiling novel.

A full review, with a playlist to go with the book can be found at:

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2018/09/nu-folk-swansong-by-kerry-andrew.html ( )

4.5*

Kerry Andrew is a musician with three British Composer Awards to her name (*four* as of the 6th December, 2017). She has written choral works which subtly subvert the tradition. As her alter-ego You Are Wolf she (re)interprets folk songs in a contemporary, electronica-tinged idiom. Andrew's first novel, Swansong, is inspired by a folk ballad and shares some of the concerns and methods of her musical projects.

The novel's feisty protagonist and narrator is Polly Vaughan, an English literature undergraduate who, by her own admission, is more into booze, drugs and sex than into literary theory. After she experiences a disturbing incident in London, Polly joins her mother Lottie on an extended holiday in the Western Scottish Highlands. Polly hopes that this will help ease her feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Plans, however, soon go awry. For a start, her attempts to build new friendships and relationships seem to fail miserably. Moreover, the natural environment, beautiful and wild as it is, also comes across as decidedly uncanny. Right on her arrival she spots a strange man pulling a bird apart in the dead of night. And as the days roll on, she starts to have increasingly strange and unsettling visions which cannot be easily explained away as the effects of weed on a heavy conscience. Could something otherworldly really going on?

What makes the style of this novel particularly distinctive is the stark contrast between the fresh, contemporary (and sweary) narrative voice and the elemental, mythical and timeless symbolism which underpins the story. This is not the only dichotomy present in the novel. Indeed, the book often presents us with opposites which turn out to be closer to each other than may be obvious at first glance. "Dead / Not Dead", the mantra which Polly repeats to herself, starts off as an expression of guilt and, by the end of the novel, attracts a deeper meaning. There are similar contrasts between the urban and the natural, the human and the animal, the old and the new.

Andrew also manages to combine seemingly disparate genres. This is, at heart, a supernatural novel, a reworking of a timeless myth. But it also has elements of the psychological thriller, the crime story and the Bildungsroman. It is also a nature novel where the landscape itself becomes a central character. Somehow, it all manages to gel.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is that sometimes the metaphors pile on top of each other, giving the impression that the author is trying too hard to come up with an unusual or striking image. To be fair, however, Polly is herself a whimsical literature student and so the unconventional narrative voice is in character.

What I do know is that when I finished Swansong, I suffered withdrawal symptoms, which does not often happen to me. That is when I realised how much I enjoyed this eerie but beguiling novel.

A full review, with a playlist to go with the book can be found at:

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2018/09/nu-folk-swansong-by-kerry-andrew.html ( )

Polly Vaughan has ended up in Scotland with her mother after a disturbing incident in London. Whilst she is there she is intending to try to wrestle with her coursework to try to get her grades back into shape. Almost immediately though she begins to question what this place is, after seeing a man sitting on a stump plucking and dismembering a bird. But she has other things on her mind and sets about seeking sex, drink and drugs, something that the barman in the pub is happy to assist with.

Living miles from anywhere is unnerving for her having been using to the business of London but she finds he feet and life zips by once again in a boozy and smoke filled haze. However, she begins to see visions and hear strange sounds in the woods and waters of the Loch and can even sense that there is something else out there even when she is stone cold sober. She has a moment when she meets a grandmother of one of her crowd who takes one look at her and says she has been here before, something she brushes off.

Polly comes across the man she saw dismembering the birds once again; she has heard that he has a sinister secret, a fact that terrifies her, but something compels her to find out more about him. As they grow closer together, her visons grow stronger and more tangible until something appears one night that stirs memories that were long suppressed.

It is difficult to categorise this novel; its very heart is a mystery but its setting in the wilds of Scotland add almost timeless elements. It has depth and history in the narrative and the language makes it feel modern and contemporary. In this mix are the supernatural visions and other things that keep happening to Polly which make it very very eerie. The characters in here are not going to be ones that you grow to love, they are sometimes spiky and all have their own deeply flawed elements, however, this adds to the story that is rooted deeply in the folklore of the landscape. Great debut and one to watch out for in the future. ( )

Polly Vaughan is in a bit of a mess. She has failed her latest year at university, alienated her flatmates by sleeping with the boyfriend of one them, and has sunk into a rut of heavy drinking and drug consumption that culminated with a disastrous incident on a night out in Dalston. Aghast at the outcome of that evening, she leaps at the opportunity to escape, accompanying Lottie, her mother, on a holiday break to stay in a friend’s house in a small village on the west coast of Scotland (which would appear to be near Glenfinnan).

As the novel opens, Polly has been for a walk and while returning to the holiday home she finds a pile of feathers on the road. A little further on she encounters a man standing by a parked Landrover who appears to be pulling the body of a bird apart with his bare hands. Confused and appalled she hurries on. This proves to be just the first unnerving experience. While wandering around the nearby loch Polly sees unusual white mists, and senses something in or near the water.

Although upset by her recent experiences in London, Polly has not foresworn either drugs or alcohol, and soon befriends Fraser, who works behind the bar of the local hotel. Fraser plays the fiddle in a local folk band and proves to be as familiar with the local drug scene as Polly was back in London. Perhaps rather too familiar as a party that Fraser plans in a bothy not far from the village takes an unexpected and drastic turn. On the rebound from that mishap, Polly once again encounters the strange man who had seemed to be disembowelling the dead bird by the roadside.

Kerry Andrew is known principally as a composer, and she has also has carved a career as a folk musician, reinterpreting and refreshing a number of Celtic legends. She is clearly as adept with words as she is with music. Swan Song is occasionally reminiscent of a couple of Iain Banks’s novels (The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road), with shades of Trainspotting thrown in, but she also deploys some beautiful prose and some haunting images. Her descriptions of the Highlands landscape and the weather are marvellous and almost hypnotic.

It is an occasionally disturbing novel, but utterly gripping and immensely rewarding. ( )