BP Gregory

May 9, 2018

What Are We Reading?: Hope and Walker, by Andrew Cull

Updated: Dec 16, 2019

Rating:

5/5 Just Desserts
 

Give me the short version:

Hope, NT, is a gentle place where nothing terrible happens. Until it does.

I won a signed copy of this in a Kendall Reviews promotion!

Which just goes to show, even when you're laser-focused on writing and spending less time on the social medias, it still pays to keep a whale eye on what your favourite reviewers are up to.

Mr Cull sure knows how to pace a ghost story. Hope and Walker is a beautiful and perfectly contained short piece, vividly easing you in to life in the drying remnants of a gold rush town.

The protagonist's young voice and perspective ring clear as a bell, and especial kudos to the sensitive treatment of the subject matter. This is definitely a read for those who prefer their horror with a literary bent. And even for those who claim "I don't read horror."


 

 
Favourite bit:

"We were both 10. But he was dead. And I sat drawing him."

ADDENDUM!

Shortly after I posted this, Hope and Walker was shortlisted for the 2017 Paul Haines Award for Long Fiction.