IN this short story collection, Ruth and Liska retreat to an isolated seaside cottage to await the birth of their child and soothe it with stories. While Ruth’s body is a “portable shelter” for the baby, so are the tales, verbal constructions offering escape, wisdom and comfort, fortifying the child as it prepares for birth.

The stories alternate between Ruth and Liska, with each of their offerings preceded by a short monologue. These segments try to evoke the quiet joy of impending motherhood, but are often appallingly sentimental. “You just stay there, warm and cosy,” Ruth coos to her stomach, while Liska says she wants to help her “little sweetmeat” “know how to make your own magic.”

Bloated with schmaltz, an overuse of neat little pairings – “warm and cosy”, “safe and steady”, “cold and difficult” – and jaunty illustrations, these sections threaten to reduce the volume to a children’s book.

This gushing tone also swamps many of the stories, such as in The Elephant Dance, where the narrator urges us to “tilt your head up to see the stars. Look out for the magic.”

This is Disney trash, not literary fiction. Mercifully, it’s mainly restricted to Ruth and Liska’s dozy, dreamy interludes, allowing certain stories to be presented in more mature, rigorous writing. Indeed, the strongest in the collection are those where Logan abandons the whimsy to offer her own kind of realism.

The story Ex- could be narrated by a literary descendant of Holden Caulfield. A sardonic, slightly bitter young man looks back over his troubled life, telling us: “My real dad was some guy I’d never met… I know what people will be thinking… I’m going to stop everyone before they start because that’s not what this is about.” His estranged father collects him from school, driving them to Dover to board a ferry to a new life, before changing his mind and silently taking him back home. There are no mermaids, werewolves or circuses clogging this story, Logan’s well-used motifs, only a bleak reality.

Likewise with Flinch, a story about two young men inching towards a difficult declaration of their feelings for one another, something which won’t be welcomed on their small island community.

The strongest story is Cold Enough To Start Fires, another one Logan has liberated from the sparkly weight of fairy tales, rendering it sprightly and bold by not having to import their recurring images.

The narrator is a young boy, bullied by his brothers and offered no aid from the adults, similar to Susan Hill’s I’m The King Of The Castle.

His father scorns him, saying: “You need more fire in you.”

The boy retreats into daydreams, having a tremendous vision of an underwater dragon which gives him the courage to challenge his tormentors, although its gross influence threatens to lure him into decadence as he grows older.

Placed throughout the collection, these stories are palate-cleansers, offering refreshment from “gingerbread walls and sugarpaned windows”.

Although there is pleasure in such fanciful writing, it easily becomes tiresome. While her relatively realistic tales are the strongest, there is still value in those more typical of Logan.

The story Cutting Teeth is about a fierce woman who hunts in the forests. One day she brings a wolf home and tries to convince herself that a wild animal can be domesticated and that she, a wife, can still be wild, reminiscent of the Ted Hughes poem Epiphany.

She falls pregnant and, with sly humour, Logan replaces the luscious language of her moonlit hunts – “leafcrunch – starscent – wetmoss” – with the heavy language of maternity: “Folic acid. Maternity jeans. Moses basket.”

The world will not allow a mother to be so free, and thus she permits her husband to kill the wolf.

Some of the stories are laden with exposition, stilted dialogue or authorial comment where Logan emphasises her tale’s lesson and this does seems to push the book towards younger readers.

But the grating, juvenile aspects are sometimes eased by the author’s skill with metaphor and imagery.

Logan creates a richly imagined, salty world by the sea where a walk in the waves produces “soft thrusts of warmth when she stood on sharp stones and the blood pulsed out”, or where “seals loll on the rocks, fat as kings” and there are relentless days where the “pale light itched” and rain “applauds” on the roof.

Her skill with language is unquestioned, so it’s a pity that ability is shackled to these mawkish little tales.