#the gracekeepers

FellowFemale GazerKirsty Logan’s debut novel, The Gracekeepers, is darkly dreamy and utterly absorbing. Reading it feels like swimming in a cool blue sea. It features a floating circus in a drowning world sprinkled with archipelagos, the last earth on Earth, and a hallowed grace-yard with totem birds marking periods of grief by slowly starving in their buoyant gilded cages. This novel is a gorgeous shard of sea glass washing onto a chilly northern beach. It’s a bit like a richer, more compelling Waterworld.

The Gracekeepers primarily unfolds through the eyes of two heroines–North the fiery bear girl and Callanish the somber gracekeeper. Their stories kiss and diverge like waltzing lovers. A few other characters get their chance to shine in their own POV chapters, which I’m usually wary of but it ended up working beautifully. Everyone is struggling with their own bone-deep desires.

Logan gives us a wonderfully strange and sad post-apocalyptic world with humanity split into two factions–the earth-bound landlockers and the sea-bound damplings. Fear and prejudice fuel their interactions, and the damplings, like North, are clearly the disenfranchised ones. This book is built on binary conflicts. Can one form one’s own identity, outside of a binary? Are there paths between binaries, and if so, how safe are they to trod?

1. Congratulations on your novel debut! Would you share the origin story of this lovely tale?

Thank you! I’ve spent so long living in this weird, dark dreamy world, and it’s a treat to finally be able to bring other people in.

It began with a small, strange image. About a year after my dad died, I was out on a boat with my uncle. We’d both suffered a terrible loss – me of my dad, he of his brother – but we’d never spoken about it directly. I happened to see floating buoys with lights inside that looked like birdcages. So my mind began to wander: why would there be birdcages at sea? Grief was still very much on my mind, as well as my secular lack of a structured mourning, and a lack of a way to discuss it, and so I thought that perhaps the birdcages would be grave markers, and the lifespan of the birds inside would mark the mourning for the person who had died. The whole novel arose from that tiny, personal place.

2. Who was/is your first reader?

My partner, Annie. I read the entire novel to her, chapter by chapter, as I was writing it. Sometimes there would be a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, and she’d then have to wait weeks until I’d finished the next one! She’s now heard about three different versions of the book, as it changed with each edit. I like to think that there’s this first-draft ghost-book that only exists in mine and Annie’s imaginations, because we’re the only ones who heard it.

3. I loved all the gender-play with the circus–the subversive clowns, the sensual glamours, the wild costumes and make-up, the androgynous performances. Am I right in believing all this gender-fucking reflects intentional themes of freedom and identity?

Very much so. It’s about freedom, and about blurring boundaries, and about not having to just choose one thing or another. There are lots of different binary conflicts in the book: land/sea, male/female, gay/straight, security/freedom, wildness/domesticity. A lot of the conflict in the book is about the characters feeling they have to choose one and sacrifice the other.

By the end, I hope that the characters (and maybe the reader) have begun to feel that their world (and maybe our world) is not just a binary choice. If we want, we can choose one thing. But we can also flip between the two, or we can choose neither and follow a third path we have marked out ourselves.

I think partly that comes from my own life. I’ve had both girlfriends and boyfriends, and each time I had a new partner people would ask whether I was ‘gay now’ or 'straight now’. And the answer was yes and no. I’m a monogamous person by nature, so when I was with a man I wasn’t interested in women – but I also wasn’t interested in any other men, just the one I was with. So now I’m with Annie, and it’s not that I’m a lesbian and not interested in men, it’s that I’m not interested in anyone except her. But no matter who I was with, it didn’t change my identity. The person you’re sleeping with doesn’t have to change you if you don’t want it to.

I was born in England to Scottish parents, so I didn’t properly belong there; and now I live in Scotland but have an English accent, so people don’t perceive me as being properly 'from’ here either. I’m from both places, and also neither entirely. I’m a cis female, and I like dresses and lipstick, and generally I’m happy to present as female. But that doesn’t mean I want to always look typically female. I don’t think the way I present myself changes who I am inside, because I don’t want it to. We decide who we are, and the freedom to present ourselves however we like doesn’t change that. I’m quite happy to hold all my contrasting identities simultaneously.

4. When I started reading, I assumed that North and Callanish were the only point-of-view characters, so I was surprised and honestly a little wary when I turned a page and met a chapter from the clown Cash’s POV. I’d already grown attached to North and Callanish, and I believe it’s a risky choice to use multiple POV characters, but now I can’t imagine the novel without those secondary character chapters–especially Red Gold’s and Avalon’s. Did you always intend to tell the story from multiple POVs, or did that come about during the writing process?

This is very much a short story writer’s novel! Short stories come more naturally to me, so this was a way for me to approach the massive undertaking of a novel while still keeping to my own natural rhythm.

Each chapter is its own little tale, and I wanted each character’s point of view to subtly undermine the one that came before. So in one chapter we have the clowns observing the ringmaster’s wife, and thinking how cruel and silly she is; and then we have the ringmaster observing his wife, and of course he’s thinking that she’s sweet and beautiful and sensitive. There is no single truth, not about the world and not about the people in the world. We are all complex. We all have multiple selves. Which self we present is different depending on our company, so it made sense to me that each character could be described from multiple viewpoints, and each of those would be true – even when they were contradictory.

5. So Avalon was the closest thing to a classic villain in The Gracekeepers–a pregnant Machiavellian beauty with a burning coal heart and desperation wafting from her like the smell of strong drink. I’m particularly fond of lady villains, flawed women, “ruined” girls, and the like, so of course I hate-loved Avalon. She reminded me a bit of Lady Macbeth, aka one of my favorite characters of all time. I was particularly enamored with the idea of a pregnant woman doing and saying the things she does; that clash of growth and destruction, and how it contradicts the popular image of pregnant women as life-giving beatific figures. I clearly don’t have an actual question–I just want you to dish about Avalon a bit. Do you agree with my assessment of her?

Avalon was the most fun to write. She’s the wicked stepmother from 'Snow White’, she’s the biblical Eve, she’s Cruella de Vil. She’s seductive and full of rage – and still, she’s a loving wife and a nurturing mother-to-be. She loves her family, and everything she does, she does for her own good reasons. She can be all of these things, just as we can be myriad and contradictory things. Becoming a parent doesn’t necessarily make you a good person. I very much want children, but I don’t think it’s an intrinsically noble act.

Most people I know are many different things. This book began with the loss of my dad, and he was a contradiction too. He was an alcoholic, self-destructive, couldn’t hold down a job. But he was also a loving father who continued to support me financially and emotionally, even through his darkest times. Even as he couldn’t properly look after himself, he helped other people by working for an addiction charity. He never settled to a career, but he was massively inspirational in my career. His funeral was packed with people I didn’t even know he knew – people whose lives he’d touched, who had good memories of him. Recently his university girlfriend got in touch with me, and she had such strong and affectionate feelings for him even though she hadn’t seen him for thirty years. He was a great man, but also a deeply flawed and troubled man – and at the same time, he was a regular guy, nothing special, someone you’d pass in the street and not even notice. Every single one of us is just a regular person, but is also vitally important.

6. I really enjoyed how you used the clowns; how they ended up being central to the plot. I was terrified of clowns as a child, and as I grew up that terror evolved into just being creeped out by them. What clowns are (ambiguous) and what we project onto them (fury, anarchy, sadness) is exactly what’s so creepy about them. As you say: “Dough knew that clowns made perfect scapegoats, because what’s scarier than a clown? They stand for money and hunger, sex and rage, loss and loneliness, displacement and death. They stand for everything, and they stand for nothing.” Did you ever fear clowns as a child, and have you encountered any readers who are afraid of your clowns?

I hate clowns. Properly hate them. They’re scary and sinister and I have never found them amusing, not even as a child. I’m creeped out by painted faces and masks and anything that hides people’s faces in a grotesque way. But of course, that’s why I’m so fascinated by them. One of the weirdest things about being a writer is that you’re constantly exploring things that disturb you, because that’s where your emotional truth hides.

When I researched the history of circuses – because there’s loads of research in this book, though I don’t think it really shows; I researched circuses and English folk traditions and naval superstitions and different types of boats and which crops grow in different climates and which landmasses would exist as islands if the world did flood – I found that clowns have always served as scapegoats. Their tradition goes back to court jesters and fools. The common people (the 99%, as we’re now called) would be angry at what the kings and lords did, at their flaunting of wealth and charging of taxes. But it was too dangerous to criticise or mock those in power, or the platform to do so just didn’t exist. So instead there were the jesters and clowns: figures of fun who made themselves look silly so we could all scorn them and feel superior to them. Also, the fools and jesters could talk about political situations in a way that no one else could, because they dressed it in a funny story. We don’t just mock the clowns because they’re silly – we mock them because they stand in place of those we really want to hate. It’s the same with nursery rhymes and fairy tales: they seem like fun little stories, but many of them are a sneaky way to criticise those in power.

7. In our interview for The Rental Heart, we discussed your teen years and current life in Scotland and how it informs your literary aesthetic. Since The Gracekeepers is set in a fantasy post-apocalyptic world, how did your Scottish identity influence the atmosphere/settings, if it did at all?

Scotland is so inspirational to me. There’s the folklore and fairytales, of course, and so many of those stories (selkies,kelpies, mermaids) are based on the sea. No matter where you go in Scotland, you’re never more than 40 miles from the sea. I’ve written so much about Scottish folklore, but I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Folklore is the well I keep returning to, and I don’t see how it could ever run out.

So there’s the sea part, and in Scotland we also have the tradition of the ceilidh, a social gathering with music and wild dancing. It’s a very sociable country, and people are much friendlier here than any other place I’ve visited. Scottish folk – and those in Glasgow in particular – will always help a stranger, or chat to fill the silence, whether you want them to or not!

I love that raucous, sociable aspect: drinking and music and dancing until dawn. But I also love the other side of Scotland: days of silence and watching the tide breathe in and out. I try to bring that contrast, that non-conflicting contradiction, to all my writing. I’ll never stop being inspired by this country.

8. Are you superstitious in any way?

I’d like to say no, but I did develop some little superstitions when writing this book. I wrote the first chapters on a series of writing retreats along the Scottish coast, and at one point I was in a little east coast fishing village called Cellardyke. While I was there I visited an antique shop and bought a brass compass. From then on, I always had to make sure the compass was pointing north before I could begin the day’s writing. That was very much a book-specific superstition, as I haven’t done that for any writing since.

9.If you could pick a classic fairy tale to retell (that you haven’t already), what would it be?

’Kate Crackernuts’, a Scottish fairytale about a girl who isn’t pretty or demure, but who gets her happy ending by being clever and resourceful. It also features a fairy ball, which has a contradiction I love: it’s beautiful and glamorous and happy, but it’s also destructive and can ultimately kill you.

10. Now, please do share a little about your third book, the forthcoming story collection, if you don’t mind. I can’t wait to see it in print!

Thank you! I’m excited about it – I love writing short stories, and they’re more fun to read at events than novel extracts because you get to share a fully-formed piece rather than just a sliver. Also, the collection is written in thirteen different voices, so that’s more fun to perform as each story has such a different mood.

The book is a collection of linked stories called A Portable Shelter (due out in the UK in August). It’s inspired by Scottish and Scandinavian folk tales, and it’s all about loss, identity and the purpose of stories.

To be honest, I’m already getting excited about starting Book #4, which will be another novel. This September I’m off for a one-month writing retreat to a forest in the middle of Finland, where I’ll start writing it. I’ve been planning three possible novels, and I don’t know yet which one I’ll actually write. But it’s nice to have options!

Conversation by Dawn WestandKirsty Logan.