Hollow Shores

By Gary Budden

Budden’s debut collection blends the traditions of weird fiction and landscape writing in an interlinked set of stories from the emotional geographies of London, Kent, Finland and a place known as the Hollow Shore.
The Hollow Shore is both fictional and real. It is a place where flowers undermine railway tracks, relationships decay and monsters lurk. It is the shoreline of a receeding, retreating England. This is where things fall apart, waste away and fade from memory.

Finding horror and ecstasy in the mundane, Hollow Shores follows characters on the cusp of change in broken-down environments and the landscapes of the mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dead Ink
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781911585770

Gary Budden

Gary Budden is the co-director of Influx Press. His work has appeared in Structo, Elsewhere, Unthology, The Lonely Crowd, Gorse, Galley Beggar Press and many more.

Reviews for Hollow Shores

[datrappert · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Budden's first collection is a good complement to London Incognito, but the interrelated characters and recurring themes never quite have the impact he must intend. It is also so British in its concern of life in London vs. outside of London, particularly the coast, that it is difficult for an American reader to get too deeply immersed in it. There is also an obsession with birds. In fact, this probably works better as a travelogue than as fiction. Which isn't to say that Budden writes poorly or cryptically. But these stories of the trials of everyday life, with a bit of a mystic or supernatural element thrown in, never quite gel.