‘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.’

Published: January 25th 2018
by Jonathan Cape

~ Following a disturbing incident in London, English Literature student Polly heads to the Scottish Highlands on holiday with her mother, in a bid to escape the reality of Uni and the repercussions of certain actions.
This is a contemporary tale intertwined with supernatural elements that was inspired by traditional folk ballad ‘Molly Bawn.’ If you’ve ever been extremely North of Scotland, you’ll know that this is the perfect setting for this kind of ‘magical realism’ and it won’t be too difficult to imagine the atmosphere of the rural village in the West Highlands that ‘Swansong’ describes. Or indeed the strange phenomenons that Polly begins to experience. Kind of. Or is it just what she’s been smoking?

Polly is by no means a perfect fictional heroine, she’s actually quite a typical British millennial student, and this novel is all the more compelling for it. She makes ‘bad’ decisions and doesn’t always do the ‘right thing’. In fact it’s pretty much established in the first few pages that she is not really always a likable person (bearing in mind that this is written entirely from her own point of view and general feelings of inadequacy) And I should mention that while the Highland setting might be romantic, our protagonist’s descriptions of that setting are certainly not:

‘…the seaweed was like discarded latex-wear from an S&M basement party.’

Despite the supernatural element, this novel is fresh and contemporary, driven by Polly’s personality – colourful metaphors and all. While I appreciate that this converging of genres and different elements will be too jarring for some peoples tastes, for me personally, to be frank: it’s fucking weird and I love it.

5/5*

~Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I am not associated with the author or publisher in any way. My opinion is completely unbiased and entirely my own~

I struggled to feel empathy towards Polly, the main character, but still I was drawn to finish the story. At times there was an eerie sinister feel to the storyline, to the characters and the setting. The fantastic setting added to this greatly and the descriptions were vivid.

Sadly this book was bad for me.

It could be for a number of reasons why that is:
- magical realism and me are a very... messy thing. We either love each other way to much or hate each other with a fiery passion. (In this case the later!)
- i do not like a books make me feel like i have NO clue what is going on for another reason than to make the story appear more mysterious and strange. (which this book does)
- has a VERY unlikeable main character that is utterly selfish and is not a person i want to spend any amount of time with, let alone the amount it took me to read this!
- the writing was... all over the place? If there was actual flow and connection to everything i did NOT see it.

So to say this in other words:

If you love strange books, that have elements of magical realism that are sometimes actual magic and sometimes could be either just imagined things or dream like moments or anything in between those things, this book is perfect for you.

If you love people as characters that are behaving in ways that nobody really should behave like... this book is for you.

If you don't mind strange writing style that makes the story feel disconnected and strange, not flowing together, strongly put together in ways that makes me feel like parts of the story where written years ago and randomly fitted into newer written parts in moments the story needed... something. Give this book a try.


All in all?

I have no idea how to rate or review this book because i just know that for me personally i didn't work.

I wanted to like it. I am always happy to give books that are set in Europe and different parts of it that are not typically mentioned a try. I love given books a try that talk about folklore and myths, and include them into the story in a way that makes you wonder if it might be something or not.

But this book just didn't work for me on too many levels to be able to say that i can recommend it.

Decide for yourself it you want to give it a try or not!

Kerry Andrew creates the same atmosphere with her words as she does with her music.

In <i>Swansong</i>, which is inspired by the Molly Bawn folk ballad, she writes the <i>Bildungsroman</i> of Polly, an English literature student, who flees from London after a terrible incident that exacerbates her feelings of inadequacy adding guilt to it, joining her mother on a Scottish holiday. In the Highlands, she finds herself in a village full of rural magic (often literally, too) and an array of colorful characters whom she can’t build meaningful relationships with. From the furry tarmac to the misty garden with its glossy lawn and from the firecrackle glaze of minerals to the breathing, costume-changing loch, Andrew paints (or composes) nature with lovely details, as Polly settles in her strange new home, though there is more strangeness in her head…

Though this messed-up substance-abusing lead character and first-person narrator couldn’t resonate with me, her character was developed skillfully in the end. From the usual pop culture references and sometimes tiresome self-criticism to her disregard for danger and pangs of shame that teach her nothing, she is the archetype of student all regular parents, but her aloof mother, dread their children would become. She is a bit passive aggressive in her new environment, as she lets the world go on around her, commenting on everything in her head and completely undiplomatically just hating people she doesn’t like (Becca).

Although it was used effectively and I admit I may be in the minority here, I found that her language pushed the dirt level higher than I am willing to take in a book with aspirations of literary fiction (f- and s- words on almost every page). Polly’s hyperactive imagination is relayed with goofy humor, which sometimes prevents the reader from immersing herself in the magical story and absolutely fantastic and lush descriptions of nature. The punchlines did make me laugh out loud a few times, but this combination of humor and contemplation with the irritating f-words et co. created a fragmented feel. Although the atmosphere alone makes it a worthwhile read, I would have enjoyed it much more if at least half of the typical studentish dirty-and-fun talk had been edited out (I hope it will be edited out in the final version). The love scene description with the disillusioning and vulgar details definitely shifted it towards the YA romance category, but fortunately it shifted back to the literary fiction genre in the second part, where the threads were tied together.

What seems just a dash of magical realism in the first part turns into full-fledged folklore in the second part and perhaps this shift was not as delicate as I hoped it would be. Accepting the magical elements as something natural paradoxically detracted from the very magic. That said, the strange mythical voice that interspersed with the first-person narrative and grew unbearably intense towards the end where the mystery was elucidated, was dreamlike and beautiful. The plot, seasoned with the individual stories of some of the secondary characters, was designed masterfully around the folk tale.

In the end, Polly’s extraordinary character development, the sensitive observations and the vivid atmosphere made it a satisfying read and the magic lingered long after I closed the book.

Many thanks to the publisher for the advance reader copy.

stunningly assured, immersive and vividly atmospheric! The Scottish Highlands never dissapoint - beautifuly written

After a horrific drug fuelled incident in which she fears she may have been involved in a death, Polly goes with her mother to a remote Sottish island. There she continues to drink, take drugs and have sex whilst slowly being drawn into the rhythms of life in a natural environment, making a connection with a reclusive man and seeing glimpses of a ghostly girl.
Part myth, part mystery, part self-discovery this is an intriguing and unusual read.

Swansong is a haunting mix of modern life and ballad mythology in a novel about guilt, the past, and transformation. Polly is in the Scottish Highlands to escape everything that went wrong in London—her degree, her flat, her friends, and an incident after a night out she’s fleeing from. There’s not much to do except drink, drugs, and seducing the local bartender. However, Polly keeps seeing strange white shapes across the water and soon she’s intrigued by the mysterious loner who lives in the woods. She’s keeping her secret whilst trying to work out his.

Part of the novel is based on a folk ballad story and even without knowing this until the end, the book has a feeling of being steeped in tradition, whilst also being about a girl firmly in the modern day. Andrew combines descriptions of the landscape and Polly’s strange visions with imagery rooted in contemporary references to create a writing style that updates old tradition and stories of metamorphosis into another iteration, a modern one.

Swansong is a book about a young woman escaping messed up city life and mental health issues by ending up somewhere more remote, similar to other recent novels like Sara Baume’s A Line Made By Walking. This sub-genre feels like a reaction to modern life for young people and at its best—like in Swansong—feels like it combines literary and other traditions with contemporary issues in interesting ways. The folk music side to the novel is quite understated in the actual reading experience, becoming most apparent in the following author’s note, but the not quite natural goings on hint towards something mythological.

This is an eerie and strangely tense novel that shows how the transformation of old material and styles can produce stories both modern and traditional at once.

Kerry Andrew is a musician with three British Composer Awards to her name. 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 than at first glance. "Dead / Not Dead" is a mantra which Polly repeats to herself and which 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.

I liked this modern retelling of a potent myth but disliked the overwritten prose style which, rather than being individual, has that try-hard, self-conscious 'creative writing' vibe: a dead bird's open beak is 'near-orgasmic', a strawberry cream chocolate is 'the Claire's Accesories of confectionary', midges are 'manically doodling' and doing 'a stonewalling jump away from us' - it's not poetic, it's clutter. More pared-back and authentic writing would have showcased the story rather than weighing it down in unnecessary wordiness. Not for me, I'm afraid.