Author Amy McCulloch: ‘One trip in Kerry sparked a lifelong love of walking’ - The Gloss Magazine

Author Amy McCulloch: ‘One trip in Kerry sparked a lifelong love of walking’

How walking the Kerry Way sparked a love of walking and ultimately Amy McCulloch’s latest novel Breathless. Here the author shares her favourite transportive books …

Travel has always been in my blood. As a child of dual heritage, with dual citizenship and family spread across the globe, I find it hard to root myself in one place. At one particularly intense crossroads in my life, travel saved me. On the day my marriage fell apart, I found myself alone for the first time in my adult life – thousands of miles from my friends and family. I knew I had a choice – I could stay put and wallow, or I could do something good for my body, while I tried to figure out these big emotions.

I decided to take the advice of Cheryl Strayed in one of my favourite memoirs – Wild – and “put myself in the way of beauty”. While I wasn’t quite ready to walk the Pacific Crest Trail, I instead found myself googling “longest walks” around the world. I came across the Kerry Way – Ireland’s longest way-marked trail – and it seemed perfect. Stormy seas, green fields, dense forests… the next day I was on a plane across the Atlantic to start my journey. I felt like I was channeling Cheryl with every step – except I got a full cooked Irish breakfast each morning from my lovely B&B hosts. No camping food for me.

Every step seemed to bring me back to life. That trip in Kerry sparked a lifelong love of walking, and I was inspired to see just how far my feet would take me. Every walk I chose after that, I pushed myself a little bit further – and a little bit higher. After I reached my first proper summit – Mt Toubkal, in the stunning Atlas Mountains of Morocco – at sunrise on New Year’s Day, I was hooked. I wanted to see just how high I could go. My feet led me all the way to Nepal, and to my first 8000m peak, Manaslu – the mountain of the spirit. It certainly restored mine, and in the death zone I even took a moment to sit in the snow, pull out a notebook, and jot down a few lines of what would become Breathless.

Living at base camp for a month was inspirational. The inherent dangers of the environment, paired with the isolation and lack of authorities – not to mention the big personalities (and egos) on the mountain, seemed to me the perfect recipe for a thriller.

Yet only a few months after I summited, the world locked down. My passport remained tucked away in my drawer. Instead of big mountains, I had to content myself with the (very small) hills of my local neighbourhood. It’s why I found myself diving into fiction with relish. I particularly loved Wahala by Nikki May, which is based in South London (where I live too). Nikki writes so vibrantly about London, the sights and smells, the people and the food – especially Nigerian cuisine. As I was walking around the neighbourhoods that Nikki described, I could almost see the characters Ronke, Simi and Boo living out their lives in my surroundings. It helped me see my neighbourhood in a new light, and I appreciated it all the more for it.

A book that took me a little further afield was Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter by Lizzie Pook. Not only does it have one of the most astonishingly beautiful covers I think I’ve ever seen, but Lizzie does an incredible job bringing the red sand and searing heat of 1880s Bannin Bay, Western Australia to brilliant life. I found myself riveted by this tale of a pearler’s daughter who goes on the hunt for her missing father. Lizzie is a travel journalist in her day job, and you can tell that she has immersed herself in the detail of this time period and place. She makes it effortless for the reader to imagine themselves there – something I really appreciated when a planned trip to Australia fell through thanks to Covid-19.

For something a little spookier, I loved All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes. It takes place on Antarctica, where the protagonist faces a monster out on the ice that is picking off their fellow shipmates one by one. My follow-up novel to Breathless is set on Antarctica, so I had a personal interest. But Ally explores gender and identity while also crafting a masterful, insidious horror novel that really got under my skin. Like The Terror and Thin Air before it, there’s nothing like curling up at home with a scary read to make you feel like you’ve truly been transported.

Amy McCulloch is a Chinese-White author, born in the UK, raised in Ottawa, Canada, now based in London. Breathless is her debut adult novel; she has written nine novels for children and teens – including novels such as the bestselling Magpie Society books which she co-wrote with social media star Zoella, with whom she is great friends.

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