Aileen recommends The Rental Heart by Kirsty Logan
Enter the bizarre world of Kirsty Logan as she spins short but richly imagined stories and addresses modern day dilemmas: the trading of one heart for another, emotional disconnection, absent lovers, the quest for perfection rather than something real.
These are 21st century fairytales of love, lust and longing, conveyed simply and beautifully.
A lonely woman accidentally creates an origami boyfriend, another rents a coin-operated boy rather than accepting the attentions of the man who loves her. A rich lady misbehaves with her maids, whilst a reluctant lover awaits the end of the world with a bottle of vodka and the wrong woman.
We pass in and out of the lives of the characters, getting sometimes fleeting glimpses of their strange and colourful worlds, their desires, their need to escape from normality. Though the stories are often surreal, they reveal hidden truths about ourselves and our own lives, and the ‘dozen secret selves hidden inside.’ They explore the choices we make; whether to destroy other people in order to save ourselves and win our own freedom, or whether we might find another way.
Anything can and does happen in these short but satisfying stories where the laws of physics don’t apply and the only limitations are those of the human heart. Kirsty Logan is surely one to watch.
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