> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 December 2020
  • ISBN: 9781529111286
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

Things We Say in the Dark




A shocking contemporary collection of dark, feminist short stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing horror, by a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter.

'Gripping . . . You won't put it down' Sunday Telegraph
A shocking collection of dark stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing supernatural fiction.
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.

'A brilliant collection of stories . . . All will burrow their way into your brain and not let go' Stylist

'Shimmers with menace . . . Fans of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson take note' i Newspaper

KIRSTY LOGAN WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF BRITAIN'S TEN MOST OUTSTANDING LGBTQ WRITERS by Val McDermid for the International Literature Showcase in 2019

  • Published: 1 December 2020
  • ISBN: 9781529111286
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Kirsty Logan

Kirsty Logan is a professional daydreamer. Her first story collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales, won the Scott Prize, the Polari First Book Prize and the Saboteur Award. Her first novel, The Gracekeepers, won a Lambda Literary Award and was selected for the Radio 2 Book Club and the Waterstones Book Club. A Portable Shelter won the Gavin Wallace Fellowship and Things We Say in the Dark, a collection of feminist horror stories, was optioned for TV. Her short fiction and poetry have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, Italian and Chinese, adapted for stage, recorded for radio and exhibited in galleries. She lives in Glasgow with her family.

@kirstylogan
www.kirstylogan.com

Also by Kirsty Logan

See all

Praise for Things We Say in the Dark

[Logan] has a fantastical imagination that's rooted in the impossibility of pinning things down to the prosaic

Val McDermid, 10 Most Outstanding British LGBTQ Writers

In luscious, vivid prose, Logan – already a rising star on the Scottish literary scene – brings to mind Angela Carter, or Atwood or Winterson at their best

Independent

A supremely talented young writer

Scotsman

The lustrous, abandoned intensity of her prose is always a joy.

Daily Mail

Kirsty Logan's lush, evocative prose mingles terror and beauty, forming nightmares so compelling you never want to wake up. Her stories are living things, strange mesmerizing creatures that lull you with poetry before swallowing you whole. Ms. Logan deserves to be one of the literary superstars of our generation.

Jennie Melamed, author of Gather the Daughters

Avant garde, brilliant and confronting, Logan effectively tackles universal female fears with flare and insight.

Dawn Kurtagich, author of The Dead House

Haunting, playful and scary. Like Joyce Carol Oates at her best.

Mariana Enriquez, author of The Things We Lost in the Fire

Things We Say in the Dark perfectly illustrates Logan's command of the short form. In this contemporary collection, she invites you over the hearth for a storytelling session that goes right to our deepest, most closely guarded fears. The titles are a particular delight, with highlights such as 'Girls are Always Hungry When all the Men are Bite-Size' and 'Sleep, You Black-Eyed Pig, Fall into a Deep Pit of Ghosts'.Join Logan on an unsettling journey through the murkiest corners of her imagination, which is a fertile as it is expansive.

List

Like slipping into a fever dream...The strength of the collection lies in Logan’s ability to experiment with form and explore various types of nightmares; the horrors which Logan imagines strike a chord through the sheer vivacity of her prose

Sublime Horror

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.

Stylist

Kirsty Logan has in my opinion created an absolutely perfect collection of dark, vivid, insidiously creepy and outright horrifying tales to really drawn you in, mesmerise you and spit you back out again with a buzzing brain full of tumbling thoughts.

Bookish Chat

Logan is truly one of the best contemporary horror writers. Inclusive, powerful and eerie, Things We Say in the Dark is a dark shimmering potion of both unease and nourishment. So go home, lock your doors and windows, but just know that your fears are in there with you.

The Skinny

Thoroughly haunting

Scotsman

Fans of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson take note...Logan's prose shimmers with menace and her tightly wrought nightmares feel intensely real.

i

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.

Herald

Kirsty Logan has been compared to Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson, and although there are obvious similarities…Logan has her own distinct voice… Things We Say in the Dark is deliberately dream-like, or rather, nightmarish… [it] will make for the perfect trick-or-treat for adults

Chris Dobson, Wee Review

Logan observes modern anxieties and commonplace troubles and twists them into surreal new shapes...marvellously unnerving...her sharp wit is unmistakable.

New Statesman

Marvellously unnerving… [Logan’s] sharp wit in unmistakable

Ellen Peirson-Hagger, New Scientist

A lyrical and deeply visceral account of the world turned in on itself. In reading it, you are reminded of the darkest thoughts you have ever allowed yourself… Logan is a master of dragging the reader deeper so slowly, with such great care, that you only notice how far you’ve sunk when you look for air and there is none

Kirsten Knight, The Student Newspaper

Finely crafted feminist short stories, each one gripping and unnerving in equal measure… you won’t put it down

Sunday Telegraph

A dark delight… It’s a well-paced, stylistically playful collection – and most importantly, deeply unsettling

Tatler

Literary and menacing. Powerfully unsettling. A fascinating collection.

Metro

A short story collection with tales that are eerie and gruesome enough to keep you awake at night… rich in feminist storytelling, Scottish folklore, and queer women. A perfect collection to read aloud to each other for a fright on a stormy night in front of the fire

Erica Gillingham, Diva

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.

Guardian

This collection of stories, all crepuscular, shaded and of the dark side, are a delight... thrilling... This is horror wrought quietly effective

Eric Page, Gscene