This book considers four thematic areas of the supernatural – quests, dangerous women, doubles and ghosts – each explored in one of the four main chapters. Bringing together contemporary women's writing and the Scottish fantasy tradition, it investigates in-depth some previously neglected texts such as Ali Smith's Hotel World, Alice Thompson's Justine, Margaret Elphinstone's longer fiction, as well as offering readings of more popular texts including A.L. Kennedy's So I am glad, and Emma Tennant's The Bad Sister and Two Women of London. Underlying the broad scope of this survey are the links – ... More

This book considers four thematic areas of the supernatural – quests, dangerous women, doubles and ghosts – each explored in one of the four main chapters. Bringing together contemporary women's writing and the Scottish fantasy tradition, it investigates in-depth some previously neglected texts such as Ali Smith's Hotel World, Alice Thompson's Justine, Margaret Elphinstone's longer fiction, as well as offering readings of more popular texts including A.L. Kennedy's So I am glad, and Emma Tennant's The Bad Sister and Two Women of London. Underlying the broad scope of this survey are the links – both explicit and implicit – established between the examined texts and the Scottish supernatural tradition. Having established a connection with a distinctively Scottish canon, the author points to the ways in which the selected texts simultaneously break from past traditions and reveal points of departure through their exploration of otherness, as well as their engagement with feminist and postmodernist discourses in relation to the questions of identity and the interrogation of the real.