The Ingredients of Human Connection: A Conversation with Craig Hallam

Shuck cover.

The opening scene of Shuck, a modern gothic horror tale perfect for the Spooky Season, finds Gordon, a retired miner, discovering a tear in the jumper that his wife, Jean, knitted for him before she died in a hit-and-run. Flailing, Gordon runs back, performing clumsy surgery on the jumper in an attempt to preserve Jean’s presence in his life, hanging on to the threads of yarn as if they can keep him from drowning in his grief. As if the jumper can maintain a connection to his dead wife.

Shuck is Craig Hallam’s latest novel. At 297 pages, it packs a punch. Gordon, a retired, widowed miner, is haunted by a big black dog—the shuck. Meanwhile, Gordon’s granddaughter, Cassie, is hunted by a different, less paranormal predator. But these are craft excuses to tell the story of Gordon, Michelle (Cassie’s mum and Gordon’s daughter), and Cassie. Shuck tells the story of one family and their missed connections.

The first thing that strikes me when I read Shuck is the sense of place. The story takes place in Doncaster, Craig’s home town, in the 1990s. According to Craig, the family’s story and the background of post-industrial decline are based on true things that happened to him and his friends, growing up in Donnie under the shadow of the pits closing down. The atmosphere of an entire town losing direction, losing a connection with its identity, creates the background for the specific horrors that Gordon and Cassie experience.

But the town isn’t just a setting; it’s the driver of the story. When I talk to him, Craig notes that while he used his childhood as a springboard, he was interested in the effects of the closing of the mines on generations of Doncastrians. The town, he says, still laments the mines even now. This mindset creates a particular lack of hope that is evident in both the way Gordon sinks into inaction and despair, and the way Cassie and her generation—even the older boys she hangs out with—feel there’s no point in even trying. The collective disconnection of the community from itself becomes the medium in which individual isolation grows.

In a particularly poignant moment in the story, Gordon finds himself in a pub with other out-of-work miners. Theoretically, he is among peers—he has common ground with these people, he knows them (even if not specifically). They are supposed to be his people. But for various reasons, he is isolated even among this crowd.

And even with his family, Gordon cannot find a connection. Cassie’s mother, Michelle, had fallen out with her parents even before Cassie was born. Cassie hides her visits to her grandparents from her mother, as well as Gordon’s deterioration. Gordon and Cassie keep trying, but they cannot seem to talk to each other about their pain. Cassie visits, witnesses the decline that Gordon tries to hide, and keeps it to herself because she doesn’t know where the boundaries are—will she offend Gordon if she tries to help? Would Michelle be cross with her for talking to him?

Cassie, as well, is alone even among her friends. The girls she hangs out with are a far cry from real friends. Hanging out with older boys, the joy rides, the raves—in all these scenes, Cassie is with people, but alone with her thoughts. She doesn’t like the other kids but feels like she has no choice but to hang out with them.

Craig’s interest in isolation and its costs isn’t academic. In his previous book, Down Days, he described vividly his struggles with depression. He says he refused to talk about his struggles—much like Gordon—because he didn’t want to be a burden on other people. When the depression was too much to handle alone, he asked for help, and Down Days came out of the attempt to articulate his feelings, mainly to himself. The book wasn’t written as a self-help guide, but came out of a diary Craig kept during his “Down Days”—days when he couldn’t do anything but curl up on the floor into a fetal position, and sometimes write. He says the book’s existence, let alone success, was entirely accidental. He didn’t even want to publish it, but once his wife convinced him to post it on the web for others, the ball rolled from there.

After the book was published, he started hearing from readers who connected with the raw vulnerability in the book. He says he was surprised by how many people saw themselves in Down Days. He connected with his readers through his writing, whether these readers were friends or strangers. In Shuck, he meticulously examines how human connections break down or get lost in miscommunications. He even uses his craft to deliberately prevent readers from connecting to certain characters. When I ask him about the older boys’ psychology, he tells me he wanted them to be as faceless as the shuck that haunts Gordon. He knows why they are the way they are, but he withholds this from the readers. He wants us to connect with Cassie and Gordon, not the boys.

So, what are the conditions for human connection? In our conversation, Craig suggests that humans aren’t built for the way social media has us communicating. He says that throwing thoughts out to the ether and having thousands of people reply isn’t the way we are supposed to communicate. One-to-one communication, he says, works much better.

As authors, we usually sit at our desks, throwing our thoughts on the page and sending them out into the world. And yet, complete strangers read our books and see themselves in them. Many people saw themselves in Down Days, Craig’s memoir about depression. I know I saw myself in Cassie, the shy, awkward teenager who finds other kids’ antics boring. Craig tells me that he had to relive some unpleasant experiences from his childhood while writing Shuck, and this authentic struggle comes through the pages and makes Cassie and Gordon three-dimensional and relatable characters.

A communication channel (whether physical proximity, a Zoom call, or a book) and authentic vulnerability are necessary but insufficient conditions for a real human connection. What’s missing is the vocabulary, the ability to communicate our own struggles in a way someone else would understand. For instance, Cassie visits Gordon several times throughout the book. They have plenty of opportunities for connection. But they cannot seem to talk about their pain, even if they trust and care about each other. We put ourselves—sometimes even our authentic selves—online and get trolling and miscommunication in response.

The missing link is context. A book has much more context than a tweet. When we push ourselves to use accurate language, to try and see our words from other people’s perspectives, to unpack the context in which our struggles live, we make a real connection. It’s not that you need an MFA to use accurate language, but writers who sit with themselves for hours on end usually have a head start. However, unpacking context is almost impossible when everything needs to fit into 120 characters or a picture. Social media breaks down the human connection because we can’t possibly create the conditions in which others can understand our context.

Craig's books work despite being one-to-many communication, like social media is. The form itself creates the conditions that social media can't. A novel—even a short one like Shuck—gives him space to unpack context, find precise language for inarticulate pain, and shape raw experience into something another person can enter and recognise. But, as I noted before, the form is just one factor contributing to why we feel connected to characters. I’ve read books that didn’t manage to do that. But I can feel Craig’s characters’ pain, especially in Shuck. When Gordon clutches Jean's torn jumper, when Cassie sits silent in a car full of kids she doesn't like, readers don't just observe isolation—they inhabit it. That's the mechanics of connection Craig has been investigating: not just being vulnerable, but making that vulnerability a space someone else can occupy.

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About Shuck:

In the heart of post-industrial Yorkshire, Gordon, a grieving widower, struggles to adjust to a life of harsh quiet in a house haunted by more than just memories. His teenage granddaughter, Cassie, trapped in the chaos of adolescence, fights to carve out her own identity amid a fractured family and a community grappling with the collapse of working-class pride.

About Craig:

Craig Hallam is an international best-selling author from Doncaster, UK. His work spans all aspects of Speculative Fiction, Mental Health non-fiction, and poetry.

Since his debut in the British Fantasy Society journal, his tales have nestled between the pages of magazines and anthologies the world over. His novels and short stories have filled the imaginations of geeks, niche and alternative readers with their character-driven style and unusual plots.

Craig has recently chronicled his experiences of living with depression and anxiety in the international best-seller, Down Days. Topping the Amazon charts in the UK and US at the start of COVID, the book has since been a finalist for the Independent Author Network’s Book of the Year Awards and read the world over.

He is currently working on the Hexford Witches and Gothic Yorkshire series’.

Find Craig’s books and social media at: Linktr.ee/craighallamauthor