Flatiron Books
Salt Slow
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Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
From White Review Short Story Prize winner Julia Armfield, a brilliant, provocative debut story collection for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link.
In her electrifying debut, Julia Armfield explores women's experiences in contemporary society, mapped through their bodies. As urban dwellers' sleeps become disassociated from them, like Peter Pan's shadow, a city turns insomniac. A teenager entering puberty finds her body transforming in ways very different than her classmates'. As a popular band gathers momentum, the fangirls following their tour turn into something monstrous. After their parents remarry, two step-sisters, one a girl and one a wolf, develop a dangerously close bond. And in an apocalyptic landscape, a pregnant woman begins to realize that the creature in her belly is not what she expected.
Blending elements of horror, science fiction, mythology, and feminism, salt slow is an utterly original collection of short stories that are sure to dazzle and shock, heralding the arrival of a daring new voice.
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Book Details
ISBN:
9781250224781
EAN:
9781250224781
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
224
Authors:
Julia Armfield
Publisher:
Flatiron Books
Published Date: 2022-04-10
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Weird and wonderfulStories
Beautiful gothic horror-style writing about women. Some absolutely gripping and gruesome prose, words bent this way and that to resemble meaning you’d never have guessed, and inspired creativity in every chapter. I enjoyed how drawn the author seems to the sea; I too love the chilling drag of the waves. This isn’t a book for those who want chatter; each character barely speaks and you barely learn their names, but each is so nuanced and introspective that it’s impossible not to gobble them up greedily. It’s an easy and very interesting read. I’m going to look up Julia Armfield’s other stories right now!
I read OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA a few months ago after seeing it recommended several times and loved it, so had to come back to read SALT SLOW, Julia Armfield's debut collection of short stories. Like WIVES, the stories in this collection have a somewhat dreamlike quality to their prose, and the horror is quite understated. However I was much less fond of these stories than WIVES. I have perhaps read these books in the wrong order, as WIVES being a later release feels much more refined. Possibly I also felt a little frustration toward the end as Armfield's format became quite repetitive, bouncing back and forth between present and past, which is a trope used in WIVES as well as a fair handful of the stories in this book. I appreciate footprint is limited with shorter fiction and there have to be narrative efficiencies, but the back-and-forthing did prompt me to think, "Oh, this device again" as I was getting to the end of the collection.If these stories don't do it for you, I would strongly recommend ALL THE NAMES THEY USED FOR GOD by Anjali Sachdeva, another collection of somewhat dreamlike short stories with an understated element of horror about them.
I read Our Wives Under the Sea a while ago and wanted to have that same atmospheric, strange, beautiful experience in a short story collection. This pulled me out of a slump and gave me so many stories that I enjoyed thoroughly!
This is the kind of book that I don’t wanna not finish because I can tell that it’s a good book that probably a lot of people would like it’s very pretty writing, but it’s not for me. I found it pretty boring still being very beautiful.
