How to Gut a Fish

LONGLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL PRIZE 2022SHORTLISTED FOR SHORT STORY OF THE YEAR AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2022SHORTLISTED FOR ALCS TOM-GALLON TRUST AWARD'Unsettling, unpredictable, and brilliant' Roddy Doyle'In sumptuous and evocative prose, Sheila Armstrong writes stories that are unnerving and unsettling. Stories which make you go, wait, wait, what was that? ' Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled GroundOn a boat offshore, a fisherman guts a mackerel as he anxiously awaits a midnight rendezvous.Villagers, one by one, disappear into a sinkhole beneath a yew tree.A nameless girl is taped, bound and put on display in a countryside market.A dazzling and disquieting collection of stories, how to gut a fish places the bizarre beside the everyday and then elegantly and expertly blurs the lines. An exciting new Irish writer whose sharp and lyrical prose unsettles and astounds in equal measure, Sheila Armstrong’s exquisitely provocative stories carve their way into your mind and take hold.'Dark, devilishly well written and full of atmosphere, How to Gut a Fish is one of the most original and affecting short story collections I’ve read in years' Jan Carson, author of The Fire Starters

The stories in this collection are unsettling, unpredictable, and brilliant, In sumptuous and evocative prose, Sheila Armstrong writes stories that are unnerving and unsettling. Stories which make you go, wait, wait, what was that?, Armstrong’s short stories make tremendously good company, each one transported me to a place I’d never been before. Dark, devilishly well written and full of atmosphere, How to Gut a Fish is one of the most original and affecting short story collections I’ve read in years., Do you know when you read a sentence that is so good, it does weird things to your insides? You kind of shudder with satisfaction and hope for more. Well, I am addicted to good sentences, and Sheila Armstrong is my dealer. The stories in How to Gut a Fish are gorgeously weird, inspiring curiosity both on and off the page. If you’re anything like me, they will send you into a fit of ferocious googling: What is star jelly? How old is the moon? The story titles are works of art in themselves. This is the good stuff. Hook it to my veins., This exquisitely wrought collection made me feel as if I were inhabiting another realm: sensuous, tactile, beautiful and disturbing. Sheila Armstrong's hypnotic prose has a haunting, lingering, dreamlike effect.

Sheila Armstrong is a writer from the northwest of Ireland. She spent ten years in publishing and now works as a freelance editor. Her first collection of short stories, How To Gut A Fish, was published in 2022 and her debut novel, Falling Animals, will follow in 2023.