What do you think?
Rate this book
Signal
‘A moonlit walk, a sense of foreboding, masterfully deployed. The reader is kept guessing as to what is illusory and what real. Unsettling developments rise like smoke. A broodingly atmospheric and memorable read’ Jackie Law
16 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2020
22 people want to read
About the author
Michael Walters
2 books5 followersMichael Walters was born in Port Talbot, South Wales, in 1973. He studied astrophysics at the University of Kent, then spent a year training to be a journalist before becoming a computer programmer. In his spare time, he studied creative writing, first at the Open University, then completing an MA in Creative Writing with Manchester Metropolitan University. He is currently a software developer and lives with his wife and two children in North Yorkshire.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 24, 2020
The windows of Meridian House were all dark.
As she makes her way home on a cold winter night, Kate notices a few things: a naked man standing in a window 'as if he was lit up in a display cabinet', an indistinct image on her phone screen, a motorcyclist anonymous behind a black visor. In its first half, Michael Walters' story encapsulates the way it feels to walk alone in the dark, an experience that can be both threat and comfort. In its second, the strangeness ramps up, with doubled images and sinister encounters. It never feels implausible, though; there's an admirable restraint in the writing which makes the story's events all the more ominous.
I received a review copy of Signal from the publisher, Nightjar Press.
TinyLetter | Linktree
As she makes her way home on a cold winter night, Kate notices a few things: a naked man standing in a window 'as if he was lit up in a display cabinet', an indistinct image on her phone screen, a motorcyclist anonymous behind a black visor. In its first half, Michael Walters' story encapsulates the way it feels to walk alone in the dark, an experience that can be both threat and comfort. In its second, the strangeness ramps up, with doubled images and sinister encounters. It never feels implausible, though; there's an admirable restraint in the writing which makes the story's events all the more ominous.
I received a review copy of Signal from the publisher, Nightjar Press.
TinyLetter | Linktree
December 29, 2020
I'm grateful to Nightjar Press for a signed copy of Signal to consider for review, together with other short stories published alongside it.
Signal is a haunting walk through a nighttime city by a lonely and anxious young woman. We meet Kate passing Meridian House on her way home from work. Kate likes to imagine friendships with the people she glimpses through the lit windows, but they're not there on this Saturday night, Christmas Eve Eve.
Kate is anxious: about money (she may have no shifts in the New Year), about her parents, who have unexpectedly turned religious. She's missing her sister (we will learn more about that). Walters deftly portrays Kate as a loner, an outsider, slightly ill at ease even in her shared house - and slipping out for a night walk as soon as she can.
What happens then - well, there are unexpected corners of every town, unexpected aspects in all of us. As Kate walks, pondering her life and her past, she feels somebody or something is reaching out for her. Sending her messages, perhaps? Signals? Her walk somehow transcends that inside-outside division, bringing her into the orbit of strange events, other peoples' stories.
The story is poised on the cusp between the everyday - that town in the desperate days before Christmas, the realties of work in the 21st century, a cheerless family situation - and the fantastical - the naked man waving from a window, the strange odyssey that Kate undertakes across town, the feeling that somebody is pulling strings.
Perfectly captured, this book seems to bring us to a moment when - something - happens, or not. Then leaves us to speculate on just what, on what was real and what wasn't. It's a gorgeous story. The book itself is also attractively designed and the series overall one I'd strongly recommend.
Signal is a haunting walk through a nighttime city by a lonely and anxious young woman. We meet Kate passing Meridian House on her way home from work. Kate likes to imagine friendships with the people she glimpses through the lit windows, but they're not there on this Saturday night, Christmas Eve Eve.
Kate is anxious: about money (she may have no shifts in the New Year), about her parents, who have unexpectedly turned religious. She's missing her sister (we will learn more about that). Walters deftly portrays Kate as a loner, an outsider, slightly ill at ease even in her shared house - and slipping out for a night walk as soon as she can.
What happens then - well, there are unexpected corners of every town, unexpected aspects in all of us. As Kate walks, pondering her life and her past, she feels somebody or something is reaching out for her. Sending her messages, perhaps? Signals? Her walk somehow transcends that inside-outside division, bringing her into the orbit of strange events, other peoples' stories.
The story is poised on the cusp between the everyday - that town in the desperate days before Christmas, the realties of work in the 21st century, a cheerless family situation - and the fantastical - the naked man waving from a window, the strange odyssey that Kate undertakes across town, the feeling that somebody is pulling strings.
Perfectly captured, this book seems to bring us to a moment when - something - happens, or not. Then leaves us to speculate on just what, on what was real and what wasn't. It's a gorgeous story. The book itself is also attractively designed and the series overall one I'd strongly recommend.
January 14, 2021
SIGNAL by Michael Walters
“Oh God, last night’s dream. There had been a river, and she was on the bank, looking out at her sister, who was in the violently rushing water,…”
And a signature signal as of a fish leaping from those waters? There seem to be many photos of David Bowie fishing. The admirable, endlessly interpretable story of Kate, as she survives through our pre-covid urban world of flat shares and pasta comas, beyond her older sister’s death. Watching those in the windows of a residential block, a block that survives beyond Grenfell, although another block close by is demolished. Does Kate follow some destined path as preset by her sister, finding the otherwise inscrutable menfolk that once beset her? Or does she actually become her, having been thrown back into that river of time before our era of expiring. Mouth watering, but for what?
Infinity on its side. And I have not yet even factored in ‘Cabaret’ to this scenario.
“Oh God, last night’s dream. There had been a river, and she was on the bank, looking out at her sister, who was in the violently rushing water,…”
And a signature signal as of a fish leaping from those waters? There seem to be many photos of David Bowie fishing. The admirable, endlessly interpretable story of Kate, as she survives through our pre-covid urban world of flat shares and pasta comas, beyond her older sister’s death. Watching those in the windows of a residential block, a block that survives beyond Grenfell, although another block close by is demolished. Does Kate follow some destined path as preset by her sister, finding the otherwise inscrutable menfolk that once beset her? Or does she actually become her, having been thrown back into that river of time before our era of expiring. Mouth watering, but for what?
Infinity on its side. And I have not yet even factored in ‘Cabaret’ to this scenario.
April 21, 2021
Loved it.
Something pulls, something pushes, and someone gets the message. A signal is given and a transaction is completed.
Something pulls, something pushes, and someone gets the message. A signal is given and a transaction is completed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews