A PORTABLE SHELTER
Thirteen Short Stories
By Kirsty Logan
llustrated by Liz Myhill
Published in: Hardback, 192 pages.
By: ASLS, Glasgow, August 2015, with the assistance
of the Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship
Price: £9.95
ISBN 9781906841232
Although this Limited Edition is now out of print,
a paperback edition has been published by Vintage.
In their tiny, sea-beaten cottage on the north coast of Scotland, Liska and Ruth await the birth of their first child. They spend their time telling stories to the unborn baby, trying to pass on the lessons they’ve learned: tales of circuses and stargazing, selkie fishermen and domestic werewolves, child-eating witches and broken-toothed dragons. But each must keep their storytelling a secret from the other, as they’ve agreed to only ever tell the plain truth. Ruth tells her stories when Liska is at work, to a background of shrieking seabirds; Liska tells hers when Ruth is asleep, with the lighthouse sweeping its steady beam through the window. As their tales build and grow along with their child, Liska and Ruth realise that the truth lives in their stories, and they cannot hide from one another.
A Portable Shelter is a beautifully produced collection of elegant, haunting short stories from one of Scotland’s most exciting new talents. Each story is accompanied by an illustration from the award-winning artist Liz Myhill.
CONTENTS
- Cutting Teeth
- The Keep
- Ex-
- The Perfect Wife
- The Animals Went in Two by Two
- Flinch
- The Exact Sound of Grief
- Stars, Witch, Bear
- Cold Enough to Start Fires
- The Mother of Giants
- Small World
- The Elephant Dance
- The Ghost Club