From the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018, Salt Slow is an extraordinary collection of short stories of the lives of women, the bodily and the monstrous in all of us.
Julia Armfield lives and works in London. She is a fiction writer and occasional playwright with a Masters in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. Her work has been published in Lighthouse, Analog Magazine, Neon Magazine and The Stockholm Review. She was commended in the Moth Short Story Prize 2017, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Prize 2018 and is the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018.
salt slow is exemplary. A distinct new gothic, melancholy, powerful
and poised.
*China Miéville, author of The City & The City*
Unafraid to venture beyond realism’s limits, Julia Armfield
refashions our contemporary existence as an eerie, care-worn
dreamworld, taking our quotidian anxieties and desires and handing
them back to us empathetically remade . . . Armfield is a
significant, exciting talent.
*Sam Byers, author of Perfidious Albion and judge of The
White Review Short Story Prize 2018*
This debut collection is both wild and wonderful, packed with
mythical transformations that take place in the most ordinary of
contemporary settings . . . vivid . . . visceral . . .
marvellous.
*Daily Mail*
Reading this collection is the only thing you need to do right now.
Reading this collection is the only thing you ever need to do.
Armfield is an enormous, gut-wrenching talent.
*Daisy Johnson, Man Booker Prize shortlisted author of
Everything Under*
Truly dazzling . . . Horror for the Instagram generation. There is
a melancholy sense in reading such a wonderful collection of short
stories and finding them so subtle, intelligent and imaginative.
When I put the book down I wondered: will her first novel be as
good?
*The Scotsman*
These exquisitely written stories are like the quietly surreal
lovechild of Anne Michaels and Julio Cortazar. Both moving and
poetic, salt slow introduces Julia Armfield as a writer to watch
and greatly admire.
*Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti*
The stories in this collection look at women’s bodies and their
experiences in society with an eerie, otherworldly lense . . . For
fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Sophie Mackintosh and Megan
Hunter
*Elle*
Remember the name Julia Armfield as this will be the year that salt
slow bubbles under then pops up everywhere on best-of lists and
literary prizes . . . Visceral, perturbing and exhilarating.
*Stylist*
Writers should take risks and Julia Armfield does this fearlessly
with stories that unnerve and delight in equal measure. There are
echoes of Leonora Carrington and Carmen Maria Machado, but
Armfield's distinct voice is her own: singular, visceral and eerie.
A hugely impressive first collection.
*Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations*
Visceral, fierce and beautifully unsettling, Armfield's writing has
an astonishing power. This collection haunted me with its
brilliance.
*Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory*
Her work has a timelessness to it, and a generosity of emotion
that’s brave and affecting.
*Chloe Aridjis, author of Book of Clouds and judge of The
White Review Short Story Prize 2018*
These are brilliantly addictive, barbed, illusive stories. Armfield
creates a cleverly unsettling, iridescent world that we are all the
better for entering.
*Irenosen Okojie, author of Speak Gigantular*
In the tradition of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Julia Armfield's
salt slow places a surrealist lens on women's bodies, interactions
and relationships to expose their mythic, metamorphic potential.
Subversive in viewpoint, these stories achieve a simplicity and
crispness of tone, setting and story that gives them the timeless,
evocative quality of fables.
*Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid and the Wasp*
'Armfield’s debut introduces a significant new voice in
contemporary writing; original and challenging . . . each story
seems as strange and troubling as a dream; illogical and
inevitable, and all the more powerful for that.'
*The Herald*
These short stories portray tender cruelties and macabre
metamorphoses in wickedly clever prose . . . and a sense of humour
that seems to loom up like a character in itself, having been lying
in wait in a corner all along.
*Guardian*
Thrilling . . . A writer whose next move you wouldn’t want to
miss.
*Observer*
Filled with magic, insight, and a rare level of creativity that
mark Armfield as a fresh new voice . . . Artistic and perceptive,
Armfield's debut explores the ebbs and flows of human connection in
lives touched by the bizarre.
*Kirkus*
You might have already heard great things about this collection –
and we’re here to tell you that they are all true. Yet this is a
set of unnerving, creepy and otherworldly stories where you second
guess what to take literally . . . Just when you think you’ve got
the measure of her talents, Armfield reveals another string to her
bow, she is also incredibly funny . . .
This is such a confident and brilliant work. Armfield has the rare
gift of looking like she doesn’t need to try.
*Independent*
[An] immensely accomplished debut collection . . . A city becomes
insomniac, a couple floats aimlessly in a watery post-apocalyptic
world and a student collects body parts to stick on a dummy she’s
been hiding in her cellar, in unnerving stories full of gothic
menace and beautiful writing.
*Sunday Times*
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