Imprint: Harvill Secker
Published: 03/10/2019
ISBN: 9781787301535
Length: 240 Pages
Dimensions: 222mm x 25mm x 144mm
Weight: 361g
RRP: £12.99
A shocking collection of dark stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing supernatural fiction, by a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter.
So here we go, into the dark.
Some things can’t be spoken about in the light of day. But we can visit our fears at night, in the dark. We can turn them over and weigh them in our hands and maybe that will protect us from them. But maybe not.
The characters in this collection find their aspirations for happy homes, happy families and happy memories dissected and imbued with shimmering menace. Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation; another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool. Couples wrestle with a lack of connection to their children; a schoolgirl becomes obsessed with the female anatomical models in a museum; and a cheery account of child’s day out is undercut by chilling footnotes.
These dark tales explore women’s fears with electrifying honesty and invention and speak to one another about female bodies, domestic claustrophobia, desire and violence. From a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter, Things We Say in the Dark is a powerful contemporary collection of feminist stories, ranging from vicious fairy tales to disturbing horror and tender ghost stories.
KIRSTY LOGAN WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF BRITAIN'S TEN MOST OUTSTANDING LGBTQ WRITERS by Val McDermid for the International Literature Showcase in 2019
Imprint: Harvill Secker
Published: 03/10/2019
ISBN: 9781787301535
Length: 240 Pages
Dimensions: 222mm x 25mm x 144mm
Weight: 361g
RRP: £12.99
Deeply, deeply unsettling and brilliant collection of short stories. Some feature horror, nearly all feature dread and, in the manner of Shirley Jackson, all will burrow their way into your brain and not let go.
Finely crafted feminist short stories, each one gripping and unnerving in equal measure… you won’t put it down
Literary and menacing. Powerfully unsettling. A fascinating collection.
Logan observes modern anxieties and commonplace troubles and twists them into surreal new shapes...marvellously unnerving...her sharp wit is unmistakable.
Her poetic, supernatural prose has lace edges of sticky, violent terror...Logan masters the format indubitably, channelling the spirit of Angela Carter... these tales seem to perfectly suit the unsettling times in which we live. Luckily for us, in writing these terrifying tales Logan, like Margaret Atwood or George Orwell, turns the big light on.
Fans of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson take note...Logan's prose shimmers with menace and her tightly wrought nightmares feel intensely real.
Frequently compared to Angela Carter for her luxuriant imagination and love of fairytales, Kirsty Logan shifts from the uncanny to the terrifying in her new collection of short stories. the book also works cumulatively, building up an impressive atmosphere of dread.
A dark delight… It’s a well-paced, stylistically playful collection – and most importantly, deeply unsettling