REMAINS BY ANDREW CULL - BOOK REVIEW

A distraught mother reaches beyond the grave to contact
her murdered son in an outstanding study of grief and loss

After being greatly impressed by Andrew Cull’s novella Knock And You Will See Me and his follow-up short story anthology Bones I was intrigued as to how his debut novel Remains would pan out. I’m delighted to reveal that this brutal and heart-breaking story does not disappoint and had me dangling on a string from the first to last page. Remains is undoubtedly one of the stand-out novels of 2019 which is drenched in bleakness with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness until its final tragic moments. I rarely give books five stars but this stunner fully deserves that accolade and is one of the most distinct and original haunted house novels I have read in a while.
 
Considering the horrific nature of the plot Remains was remarkably easy to read. Even though the paperback is 202 pages, it is spread over 49 very short chapters many of which have a blank page following their finish, making it deceptively shorter and easy to devour in a few sittings. Within these brief pages there was considerable power, emotion and barely a word was wasted in telling a story which was soaked in overwhelming personal tragedy.
 
Supernatural goings on aside, Remains was a story of grief and there can be nothing worse than losing a child. Parents in particular who read this will empathise with the tragic plight of Lucy Campbell, whose son Alex was murdered nine months before we pick up the story. For Lucy, her life ended when her boy died and she was left broken suffering from overwhelming guilt. Her pain quite literally drips from the page as she repeatedly sees, or feels Alex is close, calling him name, or has visions of his shadow edging towards her in the darkness. This is the type of horror which exists at the corners of your vision, creeping just out of sight, or lurking in the shadows. It reminded me slightly of the plight of the unnamed and very desperate man who searches for his lost daughter in Adam Nevill’s Lost Girl who would do anything to find her.  Lucy Campbell is no different; she will go to any lengths to reconnect with her dead son. Who says death has to be the end?
 
1428 Montgomery Road was an insidious creation. A location so horrible it brings to mind another Adam Nevill hotspot; 82 Edgware Road, the setting of the house from hell in No One Gets Out Alive. Montgomery is slightly different from Edgeware Road in that if not for the murder of Alex it would just be another house, it was the killing which morphed it from a family home into a place forever connected to death. The circumstances so brutal, the family who lived there immediately fled never to return. Lucy Campbell, however, is drawn to it, the location where she feels the strongest connection to her dead child. Where the blood stains still mark the walls, and the curtains have remained drawn for the nine months following the tragedy. But when Lucy stalks the house by sitting in her car outside, she is sure she can see a small figure in the window. This is just a normal house, on a residential street, a million miles away from the remote windswept mansions which are popular horror stereotypes. However, after a media leak a newspaper story reveals in graphic detail the exact circumstances of the death which is relayed to the reader….
 
The novel opens when Lucy is being released from a psychiatric hospital after a breakdown and we quickly find out over that period she has divorced her husband Matt. Her doctor, Bachman, who plays a key part in the story, advises her to not leave the hospital and fears she may be a danger to herself once her safety-net is removed. And sure enough, once she is discharged she feels the pull of 1828 Montgomery Road, or is it Alex?
 
Set over a relatively short space of time, this beautifully paced book, which in some ways had a minimal story, but was soaked in ambiguity gripped on every level. Lucy’s failure to move on was so easy to believe and her loss of grip on reality was riveting to follow. If you’ve read Cull’s Knock And You Will See Me you’ll know messages come from beyond the grave, and something similar happens here as Lucy’s small grip on sanity begins to fracture even more. Remains cleverly refuses to overplay the supernatural element and for the most part the horror and reality of grief are more than enough.
 
Although Remains was not an action driven novel it has some outstanding scenes; you’ll wince in a car-crash sequence where supernatural powers might be at work, and another corker where a wardrobe lurches, like its being pushed, and careers down the stairs trapping Lucy underneath. 
Haunted house novels are dime a dozen and it is very hard to come up with something new in a bulging genre, but Andrew Cull breathes new life into a familiar trope with an incredibly grim book which keeps its intensity going until the darkest of endings in the final paragraphs.
 
If you are on the lookout for sampling an author you’ve never tried before then I would suggest Andrew Cull is one to take a chance on. Horror does not get darker or more compelling that Remains.
 
5/5
 
Tony Jones

REMAINS BY ANDREW CULL 

Grief is a black house.

How far would you go? What horrors would you endure if it meant you might see the son you thought you’d lost forever?

Driven to a breakdown by the brutal murder of her young son, Lucy Campbell had locked herself away, fallen deep inside herself, become a ghost haunting room 23b of the William Tuke Psychiatric Hospital.

There she’d remained, until the whispering pulled her back, until she found herself once more sitting in her car, calling to the son she had lost, staring into the black panes of the now abandoned house where Alex had died.

Tonight, someone is watching her back.

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