From the Publisher
Praise for salt slow
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
A Best Book of the Year (The Guardian, Vanity Fair)
A Most Anticipated Book (Esquire, Time, Buzzfeed, Refinery29)
"Both delightful and discomfiting."
—The New Yorker
“A darkly exciting debut…Wickedly clever prose and a sense of humor that seems to loom up like a character itself, having been lying in wait in a corner all along.”
—The Guardian
“Electric…Simultaneously attractive and repulsive, the stories make for a chilling but hugely satisfying reading experience.”
—Vanity Fair
“Surreal, muscular stories…Fusing genres with supernatural grace, Armfield takes the discourse about inhabiting a female body to spooky, surprising places.”
—Esquire
“Examines women and the complicated relationships they have with their bodies…Armfield asks unsettling but nuanced questions about power, obsession, and loneliness.”
—Time
“Immediately calls to mind the slippery short stories of Carmen Maria Machado and Angela Carter in its gothic treatment of common girlish concerns, from puberty—a girl’s skin literally molts right before she’s kissed—to boyfriends who turn to stone. It’s the kind of quiet, meticulously crafted collection that’s a sign of even greater writing to come.”
—BuzzFeed
“An absolute joy. The writing is ridiculously, dizzyingly brilliant…Uncanny, unsettling, filled with monsters, and consistently quietly devastating. I can’t wait to read more.”
—Lara Williams, Electric Literature
“Wild and wonderful, packed with mythical transformations that take place in the most ordinary of contemporary settings…Marvelous.”
—Daily Mail
“Read just one tale from this disturbing collection and you’ll find yourself clamped between the collection’s jaws. Because, visceral, perturbing and exhilarating, these stories are something really special.”
—Stylist
“Exceptional...Hugely enjoyable...Absolutely beautifully written...So subtle, intelligent and imaginative.”
—The Scotsman
“Thrilling...A writer whose next move you wouldn’t want to miss.”
—Observer
“Eerie, otherworldly…For fans of Carmen Maria Machado.”
—Elle (UK)
“An enchanting, bizarre, and inventive portal to slightly uncanny realities…salt slow is for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Samantha Hunt.”
—Refinery29
“Unsettling, uncanny, and utterly delightful… Armfield occasionally deploys startling, stunning turns of phrase…Razor-sharp, stylish, and imaginative, Armfield’s collection is a dazzling introduction to a talented writer.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Dazzling…Each piece is filled with magic, insight, and a rare level of creativity that mark Armfield as a fresh new voice of magical realism. Artistic and perceptive, Armfield’s debut explores the ebbs and flows of human connection in lives touched by the bizarre.”
—Kirkus
“Provocative and thrilling…Armfield’s collection is exemplary as she pushes the limits of reality into beautifully eerie and unsettling worlds. She blends elements of horror, science fiction, mythology, and feminism in a way that is sure to shock and amaze readers of short fiction.”
—Booklist
“Reading this collection is the only thing you need to do right now. Armfield is an enormous, gut-wrenching talent.”
—Daisy Johnson, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Everything Under
“salt slow is exemplary. A distinct new gothic, melancholy, powerful, and poised.”
—China Miéville, author of The City & The City
“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
“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
“Armfield’s work has a timelessness to it, and a generosity of emotion that’s brave and affecting.”
—Chloe Aridjis, author of Book of Clouds
“Unafraid to venture beyond realism’s limits…Armfield is a significant, exciting talent.”
—Sam Byers, author of Perfidious Albion
Kirkus Reviews
2019-07-15
Between man-eating insects, a fashionably dressed sister-wolf, and a hypnotic feminist girl band, Armfield leaves no supernatural stone unturned in this dazzling debut.
Writing with an elegant and often poetic style, British author Armfield conjures nine uncanny worlds in her first short story collection. And while her tales are notable for their concepts, they don't lack in substance, either. Behind each of her stories lie undercurrents of loss, metamorphosis, and the ever shifting nature of human relationships. The horror of her work comes not only from the eerie occurrences on each page, but also in the relatability of her characters and the connections a reader can draw between their situations and the absurdity of everyday life. In "Formerly Feral," for example, an adolescent girl copes with her parents' divorce, her father's remarriage, and her own shifting identity as she faces school bullies and bonds with the newest member of her family—a wolf. "Smack" also deals with divorce but depicts the breakup of a marriage through the eyes of a wife holding on to her disintegrating relationship by locking herself—sans nutrition or power —in the beach house she and her husband once shared. Perhaps most extraordinary is "The Great Awake," which captures the sleeplessness of city life and the bitter, competitive spirit that accompanies it. In this strange world, plagued by the "removal of the sleep-state from the body," shadelike "Sleeps" step out of their human hosts while the tired people left behind reshape society to take advantage of the mass insomnia. The title story, meanwhile, follows a couple navigating both the salt waters that have flooded the Earth and their unspoken feelings about their future. While a story or two ends abruptly or doesn't delve quite as deeply as the most spectacular in the collection, each piece is filled with magic, insight, and a rare level of creativity that mark Armfield as a fresh new voice of magical realism.
Artistic and perceptive, Armfield's debut explores the ebbs and flows of human connection in lives touched by the bizarre.
