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Christopher, Running: The haunting second novel from Kindle Storyteller Award finalist 2024 Elisabeth Pike
Christopher, Running is the second novel from Kindle Storyteller Award 2024 finalist Elisabeth Pike.
Lanny meets Sorrow and Bliss in this shattering tale of innocence, loss, and betrayal set in the English Fens.
What if there was no way back from the thing you did? How do you keep on living when the past won't let go?
Christopher and Cassie are the best of friends, but when a tragic accident separates them for good, Christopher can't move on, and his adult life becomes a cycle of breakdowns and recoveries. Years later, seven-year-old Esme comes into his life and reminds Christopher of the friend he once lost.
But when the voice in his head tells him to do the unthinkable, Christopher makes a choice that he can't take back. And when he realises that he has betrayed the trust of the ones he loves most in the world, he goes on the run.
Can Christopher forgive himself for the past and let himself live again?Praise for Christopher,
'A brilliant, haunting and gripping novel.' Naomi M, ARC reader
'Magical, with a real sense of place, rootedness and belonging. It speaks of how past events make us who we are and mark out our lives.' Hilary C, ARC reader
'This is a poignant, heartbreaking story. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and would recommend it to anyone who loves heartfelt, beautifully written stories.' Laura D, ARC reader
'The prose is as luminous and lucid as the changing light and reflections in the wild and open Fen landscapes Pike so beautifully describes.' Jenny D, ARC reader
Bio
Elisabeth Pike is a freelance writer and maker. Her work has been published by The Guardian, Third Way, and Oh magazine, amongst others. Murmuration, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Kindle Storyteller Award 2024. Christopher, Running is her second novel.
You can find her
Mailing Sign up for her books mailing list here to get an EXCLUSIVE free book! -
Lanny meets Sorrow and Bliss in this shattering tale of innocence, loss, and betrayal set in the English Fens.
What if there was no way back from the thing you did? How do you keep on living when the past won't let go?
Christopher and Cassie are the best of friends, but when a tragic accident separates them for good, Christopher can't move on, and his adult life becomes a cycle of breakdowns and recoveries. Years later, seven-year-old Esme comes into his life and reminds Christopher of the friend he once lost.
But when the voice in his head tells him to do the unthinkable, Christopher makes a choice that he can't take back. And when he realises that he has betrayed the trust of the ones he loves most in the world, he goes on the run.
Can Christopher forgive himself for the past and let himself live again?Praise for Christopher,
'A brilliant, haunting and gripping novel.' Naomi M, ARC reader
'Magical, with a real sense of place, rootedness and belonging. It speaks of how past events make us who we are and mark out our lives.' Hilary C, ARC reader
'This is a poignant, heartbreaking story. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and would recommend it to anyone who loves heartfelt, beautifully written stories.' Laura D, ARC reader
'The prose is as luminous and lucid as the changing light and reflections in the wild and open Fen landscapes Pike so beautifully describes.' Jenny D, ARC reader
Bio
Elisabeth Pike is a freelance writer and maker. Her work has been published by The Guardian, Third Way, and Oh magazine, amongst others. Murmuration, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Kindle Storyteller Award 2024. Christopher, Running is her second novel.
You can find her
Mailing Sign up for her books mailing list here to get an EXCLUSIVE free book! -
276 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 15, 2025
3 people want to read
About the author
Elisabeth Pike
9 books3 followersElisabeth Pike is a freelance writer and maker. Her debut novel, Murmuration, a YA dystopian survival story, was shortlisted for the Kindle Storyteller Award 2024. Christopher, Running is her second novel. Find her at elisabethpike.co.uk
Sign up to her mailing list here: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1...
Find her newsletter about the ups and downs of the creative life here: https://substack.com/@minersbyelisabe...
Find her on socials @elisabethpikewriter (Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok)
Sign up to her mailing list here: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1...
Find her newsletter about the ups and downs of the creative life here: https://substack.com/@minersbyelisabe...
Find her on socials @elisabethpikewriter (Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 23, 2025
Elisabeth Pike’s novel ‘Christopher, Running' is an extraordinary achievement. It is one of those books that I suspect will linger long in my mind and memory; the atmosphere staying with me even when details of the plot have become obscured by time. The prose is as luminous and lucid as the changing light and reflections in the wild and open Fen landscapes Pike so beautifully describes. The landscape and the characters are so interwoven that it is hard to tell where one begins and another ends, like the big watery horizons of the story. The pull of place is the thread that binds the whole narrative together. The land itself even speaks directly to us, the reader, and we in our turn are drawn into its deep mysteries. There are so many compelling voices in this book but it is the Fens that speak the loudest.
August 5, 2025
A wonderful second novel by Elizabeth Pike. Atmospheric and folkloric, it manages to bring the mystery of the fens to life. I really enjoyed this story.
July 10, 2025
The story:
When he was 7 years old, Christopher lost his best friend Cassie in a terrible accident, and the effects of that event have echoed through his life ever since. Now an adult, Christopher can’t break free from his past, with the voice in his head endlessly dragging him back.
But when he is driven to do something that can never be undone, he loses the trust of the only people who care for him.
Running from everything he knows, can Christopher make sense of the past and finally make peace with the present?
My thoughts:
"Christopher, Running", is the second novel by Kindle Storyteller Award finalist 2024 Elisabeth Pike (following the young adult dystopian adventure, "Murmuration"), and I was excited to get a chance to read it ahead of its publication in August.
Set in a village in the English Fens, the story spans many years, from the tragic death of 7-year-old Christopher’s best friend Cassie, through to his troubled adulthood that finds him living with Alice, a woman formerly of his village who returns following the death of her mother. Alice, formerly a nurse, is following her path as an artist and is captured by the environment of her childhood home. She finds herself, much to her surprise and that of her friends, uprooting her life in Cambridge to move back to the village where she takes Christopher into her care when his own mother passes away.
The story is mainly told from the perspective of Alice, but also occasionally Christopher, Alice’s daughter Esme, and even in some otherworldly, almost folkloric sections, the village itself.
Alice cares for Christopher, but when her daughter is born, Esme’s safety has to be her priority; and it is this tension that drives the latter part of the book as it progresses towards the inevitable event foreshadowed at the book’s start.
This is a poignant, heartbreaking story, and the descriptions of the landscape that captures Alice’s creative passion speaks of an author who is very familiar with the environment she’s chosen to write about. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and would recommend it to anyone who loves heartfelt, beautifully written stories.
—
Many thanks to the author for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
When he was 7 years old, Christopher lost his best friend Cassie in a terrible accident, and the effects of that event have echoed through his life ever since. Now an adult, Christopher can’t break free from his past, with the voice in his head endlessly dragging him back.
But when he is driven to do something that can never be undone, he loses the trust of the only people who care for him.
Running from everything he knows, can Christopher make sense of the past and finally make peace with the present?
My thoughts:
"Christopher, Running", is the second novel by Kindle Storyteller Award finalist 2024 Elisabeth Pike (following the young adult dystopian adventure, "Murmuration"), and I was excited to get a chance to read it ahead of its publication in August.
Set in a village in the English Fens, the story spans many years, from the tragic death of 7-year-old Christopher’s best friend Cassie, through to his troubled adulthood that finds him living with Alice, a woman formerly of his village who returns following the death of her mother. Alice, formerly a nurse, is following her path as an artist and is captured by the environment of her childhood home. She finds herself, much to her surprise and that of her friends, uprooting her life in Cambridge to move back to the village where she takes Christopher into her care when his own mother passes away.
The story is mainly told from the perspective of Alice, but also occasionally Christopher, Alice’s daughter Esme, and even in some otherworldly, almost folkloric sections, the village itself.
Alice cares for Christopher, but when her daughter is born, Esme’s safety has to be her priority; and it is this tension that drives the latter part of the book as it progresses towards the inevitable event foreshadowed at the book’s start.
This is a poignant, heartbreaking story, and the descriptions of the landscape that captures Alice’s creative passion speaks of an author who is very familiar with the environment she’s chosen to write about. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and would recommend it to anyone who loves heartfelt, beautifully written stories.
—
Many thanks to the author for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
July 28, 2025
*This book releases August 15th. I obtained an early copy through Net Galley. All thoughts are my own.
Rating: 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 stars for the purposes of Net Galley and Goodreads.
Synopsis: As a child, Christopher was best friends with a girl named Cassie. When they are permanently separated, Christopher is left wandering the village unable to cope with reality and spends his days reliving his past, breaking down, and recovering.
Alice is a former resident of the village, brought back to her childhood home when her mother's health begins to decline. There, she begins to feel a new connection to her old home and also meets Christopher, a strange but honest man who she feels she should take responsibility for. But will her decision come back to haunt her years down the line?
Review: There were some major things about this book that didn't gel with me. But, before I get to those, I'll cover some things I liked about this book. First, the perspective of the village itself is interesting, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before in a book. It's a creative way of getting the all-knowing narrator for certain chapters and it was the most unique thing about the book.
Second, I love when books utilize telling a story over a period of years, and although I feel like some pacing problems arose from that usage here, it's still interesting to see the changing of friendships, trust, and characters over so long a time.
On to the more negative side of the review. Mostly, I feel this book is falsely marketed as a thriller. It begins like a thriller, it recaps the beginning at around the 80% mark, but it is not suspenseful. It reads more like general fiction in my opinion. And with that, I feel like since it doesn't really commit to suspense, it should commit more to character development. As mentioned, the pacing of this book felt slightly off. It would skip over information like how these two characters became so comfortable with each other or why one character might become more distrustful of the other character and simply mention those things offhandedly, and then repeat something else multiple times. It takes away from the decision making of the characters, especially Alice, because the audience is not seeing enough of their interactions together.
Also, Alice is the only one with any solid character development, and even that is shaky by the end. Christopher felt kind of all over the place to me (I realize you'd think that's a given, but I am considering the context here), and other side characters, even ones that are brought up often, are just there to fill a role (supportive friend, for example). There is also a background village history plot going on that was just very hard to follow for some reason? There is just so many names and even with rereading segments I only have what feels like the vaguest understanding of it.
Finally, I by no means claim to have any in-depth psychological knowledge. But I am quite certain the events towards the end of this book (that I cannot go in depth on because spoilers are bad) are entirely unrealistic. It's slightly saved at the very end, but leading up to that feels like reading a severely outdated guide to curing mental health disorders.
Overall, this was a pretty short read. I think there are some interesting ideas here, and I think that there are some interpretations (i.e. supernatural) that even make the execution a little better, but I'm not sure the whole story supports that. I think folks looking for a pretty casual read (and not looking for a lot of accuracy on mental health) could have a pretty good time with this one.
Rating: 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 stars for the purposes of Net Galley and Goodreads.
Synopsis: As a child, Christopher was best friends with a girl named Cassie. When they are permanently separated, Christopher is left wandering the village unable to cope with reality and spends his days reliving his past, breaking down, and recovering.
Alice is a former resident of the village, brought back to her childhood home when her mother's health begins to decline. There, she begins to feel a new connection to her old home and also meets Christopher, a strange but honest man who she feels she should take responsibility for. But will her decision come back to haunt her years down the line?
Review: There were some major things about this book that didn't gel with me. But, before I get to those, I'll cover some things I liked about this book. First, the perspective of the village itself is interesting, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before in a book. It's a creative way of getting the all-knowing narrator for certain chapters and it was the most unique thing about the book.
Second, I love when books utilize telling a story over a period of years, and although I feel like some pacing problems arose from that usage here, it's still interesting to see the changing of friendships, trust, and characters over so long a time.
On to the more negative side of the review. Mostly, I feel this book is falsely marketed as a thriller. It begins like a thriller, it recaps the beginning at around the 80% mark, but it is not suspenseful. It reads more like general fiction in my opinion. And with that, I feel like since it doesn't really commit to suspense, it should commit more to character development. As mentioned, the pacing of this book felt slightly off. It would skip over information like how these two characters became so comfortable with each other or why one character might become more distrustful of the other character and simply mention those things offhandedly, and then repeat something else multiple times. It takes away from the decision making of the characters, especially Alice, because the audience is not seeing enough of their interactions together.
Also, Alice is the only one with any solid character development, and even that is shaky by the end. Christopher felt kind of all over the place to me (I realize you'd think that's a given, but I am considering the context here), and other side characters, even ones that are brought up often, are just there to fill a role (supportive friend, for example). There is also a background village history plot going on that was just very hard to follow for some reason? There is just so many names and even with rereading segments I only have what feels like the vaguest understanding of it.
Finally, I by no means claim to have any in-depth psychological knowledge. But I am quite certain the events towards the end of this book (that I cannot go in depth on because spoilers are bad) are entirely unrealistic. It's slightly saved at the very end, but leading up to that feels like reading a severely outdated guide to curing mental health disorders.
Overall, this was a pretty short read. I think there are some interesting ideas here, and I think that there are some interpretations (i.e. supernatural) that even make the execution a little better, but I'm not sure the whole story supports that. I think folks looking for a pretty casual read (and not looking for a lot of accuracy on mental health) could have a pretty good time with this one.
August 9, 2025
Escape to the Fens with Elisabeth Pike’s haunting and poetic novel, Christopher Running. Rich with earthy textures and wide-open skies, the story draws you into the lives and minds of unusual characters who live close to Nature and to each other. Christopher Running plunges straight into an intrigue of secrets and betrayal, narrated partly by the ghostly voice of the village where Alice and Christopher find themselves thrown together in a strange companionship. Each feels the pull of home and away, and the weight of the past on the present, dragging them in different directions and creating gripping tension. Pike gives us a beautiful portrait of creativity through Alice and Christopher’s painting, as they draw inspiration from the landscape they so fully inhabit. I love the poetry of this novel, the sensory detail, the way it explores memory and its powerful connection with place.
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August 15, 2025This author has such a beautiful way with words. The characters, scenery and event the description of the paintings draws you in. I loved the story, Christopher is an unusual character but I couldn’t help falling in love with him. The ending…….again, beautiful
. I will definitely reading more from this author.
. I will definitely reading more from this author.
August 15, 2025
I feel as though I’ve lived the story alongside the characters. I’ve been to the caravan and the village, I’ve met them all. Elisabeth writes in such a way that everything becomes entirely real. The characters are complex and confusing and I often didn’t know whose side I was on, which only adds to how compelling the whole story is. I was hooked.
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September 4, 2025Dear readers,
Christopher, Running is a story that has been with me for many years. I started writing about the Fens in my English lessons at school, trying to get under the skin of the place. I wrote most of the book during my MA in 2006-2008. I had feedback suggesting that there wasn’t really much of a plot, just a book in which things happened, so I hid the manuscript in a drawer for a few years! I have since taken the whole book apart and put it back together several times, and now it is a book that I love.
So my first thanks go to the Fens, for giving me that sense of mystery and being the first thing I truly wanted to write about. I wrote because I couldn’t understand it, and it fascinated me. Thanks go to my Uncle John for being our favourite and making me and my siblings laugh. When you died, my siblings and I refused to believe it, and I think perhaps that sense of things hanging open, and remaining unfinished, is where this story was born.
I'm thankful for all the memories laid down of big skies, open fields, and polytunnels full of debris. I'm thankful also for my Dad’s folkloric tales that intrigued and always left me wondering.
I'm really pleased to have been able to work with Jordan Mulligan, who edited the manuscript with clarity and precision. Thanks also to Mark Swan for that wonderful cover, full of menace, loneliness, and the wild.
This book has been with me for more than half of my life, and like a burden lifted, it is now almost set free. I hope that it speaks to you and gives you a flavour of those misty and secretive flatlands.
I'm so excited for the release of Christopher, Running. It is coming out on 15th August so not long to go!
Elisabeth
Christopher, Running is a story that has been with me for many years. I started writing about the Fens in my English lessons at school, trying to get under the skin of the place. I wrote most of the book during my MA in 2006-2008. I had feedback suggesting that there wasn’t really much of a plot, just a book in which things happened, so I hid the manuscript in a drawer for a few years! I have since taken the whole book apart and put it back together several times, and now it is a book that I love.
So my first thanks go to the Fens, for giving me that sense of mystery and being the first thing I truly wanted to write about. I wrote because I couldn’t understand it, and it fascinated me. Thanks go to my Uncle John for being our favourite and making me and my siblings laugh. When you died, my siblings and I refused to believe it, and I think perhaps that sense of things hanging open, and remaining unfinished, is where this story was born.
I'm thankful for all the memories laid down of big skies, open fields, and polytunnels full of debris. I'm thankful also for my Dad’s folkloric tales that intrigued and always left me wondering.
I'm really pleased to have been able to work with Jordan Mulligan, who edited the manuscript with clarity and precision. Thanks also to Mark Swan for that wonderful cover, full of menace, loneliness, and the wild.
This book has been with me for more than half of my life, and like a burden lifted, it is now almost set free. I hope that it speaks to you and gives you a flavour of those misty and secretive flatlands.
I'm so excited for the release of Christopher, Running. It is coming out on 15th August so not long to go!
Elisabeth
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews