Swansong

A truly original debut novel from the celebrated musician.

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.

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.

I loved Swansong: a subtle, supernatural tale told in a present-day voice, unsettling right from the start. The writing is so vivid and charged with energy, it’s truly a remarkable novel.

I miss my stop on the tube because I'm so engrossed.

Memorably eerie ... When the tension is ramped up in the closing chapters, with false turns and twists galore, we root for [Polly] to the very end.

Studded with pauses for melodic appreciation … [Kerry Andrew’s] sentences and passages are as finely crafted and nuanced as her songs.

A confident and atmospheric debut … Rooted in Celtic mythology and written with exquisite precision, the novel possesses a lyrical, dreamlike quality.

A darkly captivating tale of myth, magic and sinister secrets.

A compelling supernatural fable that casts a genuine goosebumps-on-arms spell. It also bears comparison with the best of recent British nature writing … Rarely do protagonists seize you by the scruff of the neck, but Polly Vaughan’s distinctive tone and vision do just that.

Elegant, eerie and strange, this is a brilliantly chilling debut.

A very striking debut novel … A swift, lithe and engaging read.

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.

‘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…this is a brilliant novel by a writer - and musician - of frankly alarming talent.’ Robert Macfarlane 
 
In this stunningly assured, immersive and vividly atmospheric first novel from the celebrated musician, 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.

Kerry Andrew

A gorgeous folkloric novel of water and love... You should read this and you should also read Kerry's Swansong. It's a rare thing to see folklore woven into beautiful, tender human reality with such delicacy and skills

Zoe Gilbert, author of Folk and Mischief Acts

Kerry Andrew is that rare thing, a natural storyteller with one of those quietly confident voices that takes you by the cuff and leads you down unexpected passages. In the finest tradition of quest tales, Skin's protagonist sets out in search of one thing and ends by discovering quite another and both they and the reader grow a little as a result

Andrew's wonderful second novel is the deeply involving story of a difficult childhood, a search for a long-missing parent, how we view our bodies and the secrets we keep even from those who know us best.

A sweeping coming-of-age narrative whose on-point themes of gender and sexuality are embedded in evocative descriptions of London during the 1980s, and of boomtime Ireland a decade later

This evocative and sensitive tale is grounded by the authentic complexity of its characters... Inspired.

Artfully paced, with queer undercurrents, this novel is tender and totally enveloping.

An atmospheric creation... Skin stirs with references to water myths, from selkies and mermaids to sirens and cursed bodies of water.

I felt a real sense of loss when I read the last page. I didn't want this book to end. Andrew's writing is tender, beautiful, perfectly weighted. A writer we are immensely lucky to have.

A gloriously raw and watery adventure, fraught with fluidity, teen-angst and identity; an update of Ovid's transformations and Catcher in the Rye, re-gendered in the Hampstead ponds and the deeper waters, far beyond...

A brilliant, moving, tender, queer story. Highly recommended

Meg-John Barker, author of Queer: A Graphic Guide

'I didn't want this book to end... Beautiful' DAISY JOHNSON 
'A natural storyteller' PATRICK GALE 
'A gorgeous folkloric novel of water and love' ZOE GILBERT 
 
London, 1985. Joe, father to eleven-year-old Matty, has disappeared, and nobody will explain where he's gone, or why. 
 
In the long, hot summer that follows, Matty's hunt for Joe leads to the ponds at Hampstead Heath. Beneath the water, there is a new kind of freedom. Above the water, a welcoming community of men offer refuge from an increasingly rocky home life. 
 
Fourteen years later, a new revelation sees Matty set off alone in a campervan, driving westwards through Ireland, swimming its wild loughs and following the scant clues left behind about Joe. The trip takes a dangerous turn, and Matty is forced to rely on the kindness of strangers. But safety comes at a price, and with desire and fear running high, the journey turns into an explosive, heart-rending reckoning with the past. 
 
*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN i NEWSPAPER* 
 
'Artfully paced, with queer undercurrents, this novel is tender and totally enveloping' Attitude

Kerry Andrew

Praise for Skin

A gorgeous folkloric novel of water and love... You should read this and you should also read Kerry's Swansong. It's a rare thing to see folklore woven into beautiful, tender human reality with ...

Kerry Andrew is that rare thing, a natural storyteller with one of those quietly confident voices that takes you by the cuff and leads you down unexpected passages. In the finest tradition of quest tales, ...

Andrew's wonderful second novel is the deeply involving story of a difficult childhood, a search for a long-missing parent, how we view our bodies and the secrets we keep even from those who know us best.

A gorgeous folkloric novel of water and love... You should read this and you should also read Kerry's Swansong. It's a rare thing to see folklore woven into beautiful, tender human reality with ...

Kerry Andrew is that rare thing, a natural storyteller with one of those quietly confident voices that takes you by the cuff and leads you down unexpected passages. In the finest tradition of quest tales, ...

Andrew's wonderful second novel is the deeply involving story of a difficult childhood, a search for a long-missing parent, how we view our bodies and the secrets we keep even from those who know us best.

A gorgeous folkloric novel of water and love... You should read this and you should also read Kerry's Swansong. It's a rare thing to see folklore woven into beautiful, tender human reality with ...

Kerry Andrew is that rare thing, a natural storyteller with one of those quietly confident voices that takes you by the cuff and leads you down unexpected passages. In the finest tradition of quest tales, ...

Andrew's wonderful second novel is the deeply involving story of a difficult childhood, a search for a long-missing parent, how we view our bodies and the secrets we keep even from those who know us best.

Books by Kerry Andrew

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