Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan

2 reviews

amberrenfrey's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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readingwithkt's review

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dark reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

2.5 stars rounded up to 3 (because I don't like to give half stars).

I stuck this book on my “books to read in 2021” list, which I’m making surprisingly good progress on. From the blurb, A Portable Shelter sounds simply delightful! Two women who are expecting their firstborn child together, who tell it stories while it’s growing inside one of the mums. The description says it will feature selkies, stargazing, fishermen, and witches. I was expecting a book full of wonderful Scottish fairytales. To me, that sounds so wonderful and wholesome and I was SO excited to read it! 
 
These stories are fairytale-esque, with many of them being brought into the harsh light of the modern-day. Fairytales often have dark themes but I assumed, given these are spoken to an unborn baby, that they might be quite child friendly. I was wrong about that. They are pretty dark, dealing with such themes as pedophilia, child abduction, sexual assault... etc. And using language such as “shat”, which was a bit crass and unnecessary. 
 
Expectations aside, I found Kirsty Logan’s writing clunky and disjointed. I’ve heard people rave about her work so I’m hoping this was just one of her less brilliant collections. The sentences were often hard to read as she seemed to be forcing words to sit next to one another that just didn’t get on. It was as if a thesaurus had been used liberally and the flow of writing was lost in the process. Logan also integrates Scots into the book rather poorly. It is very clunky and sometimes even misused. I was very confused by this as everywhere Logan is referred to as a Scottish writer, which I assumed meant she was born in Scotland, however, I have since learned that Logan was born in England but now lives in Scotland, so perhaps she did not grow up around Scots? I don’t know her so can’t say. It’s a complex and difficult language, I don’t think I could teach somebody it, it’s simply something I know by growing up around it all the time. 
 
However, one clear example of this misuse of Scots was that the mothers regularly referring to the baby as “Coorie”, which is an Aberdonian word (or at least I hadn’t heard the word until I lived up that way) for a cuddle. So she says “Sometimes I want to shelter you here forever, Coorie.” (p102) Replace Coorie with cuddle and the sentence makes no sense. In Scots, it’s not used as a term of endearment. It’s more used in the context of “Coorie in” (cuddle in) or “go’an gie me a Coorie” (come and give me a cuddle). Clunky stuff like that made the book hard to read for me. Even her use of English language was at times clunky and particularly in the early stages of reading the book, I found myself having to reread and slowly read passages, not out of pleasure but out of confusion about what the meaning of the sentence was. 
 
The book is structured so that each mother has a couple of pages where they speak to the baby and introduce the story they’re going to tell and then the next chapter contains said story, which just reads like a short story. The mums alternate in speaking to the baby and each makes a point of saying “your mum is asleep” or “your mums out at work”, which felt a bit unnatural. I also wanted to feel like the mothers were really connecting with their baby through telling these stories and I didn’t find myself convinced that they were. It felt like they were just recounting these traumatic stories to an unborn baby. Very strange, if I’m honest. I would have liked these moments with the mums to be fleshed out, for them to be given personalities and for their bond with the baby to be growing on-page. 
 
If I’m honest, I almost DNF’d A Portable Shelter, but it had been on my start of year reading list and about halfway through I encountered the one redeeming story of the collection, which was this lovely little tale about a selkie fisherman. I thought it was lovely and particularly liked the way the plot worked out. It was titled ‘Flinch’. Reading that intrigued me enough to carry on reading the book and I found ‘Stars, Witch, Bear’ to be an interesting story about child loss. It wasn’t as strong as Flinch, in my opinion, but I thought it was stronger than stories that had come at the start of the book. I'm glad I did continue as the final story ('The Ghost Club') was very thought-provoking and one of the few stories that felt like it had a genuine learning moment within it.
 
While I’m disappointed in this book, I would consider reading another Kirsty Logan, because I like the queer Scottish themes that come through in her writing and I know that in the six years since this was published, her writing style will have improved and she will have developed her own style and voice. Perhaps around autumn time, I will try her latest short story collection, which is supposed to be gothic but I’ve heard nothing but good things about. 
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