Slip of a Fish

Ash collects words, climbs trees and swims in a deserted lake with her beloved seven-year-old, Charlie. Bemused by everyday life, she has a rich and singular interior world. Over the course of a relentlessly hot summer, Charlie begins to pull away, and in a desperate attempt to reconnect with her daughter Ash does something unforgivable. As the gulf between them grows, Ash's life begins to slip out of her grasp.Winner of the 2018 Northern Book Prize, Slip of a Fish is a joyously artful and quietly devastating portrait of motherhood, loss and love, in all its kaleidoscopic complexity.

'How many writers really attend to the quality of sentences when they make their fiction? To the heft and jiggle of words on a line? To the texture of phrasing, the fillip of some unexpected syntax or the steady rounds of sound? Not many. But here's one who does. ' Kirsty Gunn ---- `A fearless test of empathy, a tender sounding of a mind long since overgrown, and a disturbingly sensual work with a prose that skitters, sinks, hooks, pulls, resists, and flips high in gorgeous blinding flashes, Slip of a Fish heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in English fiction.' Northern Book Prize judges praise ---- 'A rich, linguistically dextrous portrait of how our inner and outer worlds collide. Slip of a Fish is a startling and inventive debut.' Helen Mort ---- `Arnold's impressive debut is strange and dexterous.. [she] has an ability to capture on the page a complex, obsessive mind without veering into pretention or convolution.' The White Review ---- `[an] absorbing' debut...an impressive portrait of motherhood, loss and fragility.' The Irish Times ---- `... few novels achieve the delicate shimmer Arnold's poetic prose evokes in the mind - a cool-warm, unsettling and very beautiful new voic e.' The Skinny ---- `A fascinating portrait of motherhood, tackling themes of identity and love and loss, but makes no grand assumptions or assertions... a beautifully written novel, almost lyric in its cadence.' Northern Soul ---- `At its heart Slip of a Fish is a novel about the passage of time .. Nothing makes us face up [to time] more vividly than our growing children.' Sheffield Telegraph ---- `Arnold's impressive debut is strange and dexterous.. [she] has an ability to capture on the page a complex, obsessive mind without veering into pretention or convolution.' The White Review ---- `[an] absorbing' debut...an impressive portrait of motherhood, loss and fragility.' The Irish Times ---- `... few novels achieve the delicate shimmer Arnold's poetic prose evokes in the mind - a cool-warm, unsettling and very beautiful new voice.' The Skinny ---- `A fascinating portrait of motherhood, tackling themes of identity and love and loss, but makes no grand assumptions or assertions... a beautifully written novel, almost lyric in its cadence.' Northern Soul ---- `With the coiled compactness and intensity of a short story, Slip of a Fish is a strange and original novel.' - Times Literary Supplement

Amy Arnold was born in Oxford in 1974. She studied Neuropsychology at Birmingham University and has worked in a variety of jobs from packing swedes to teaching and lecturing. She lives in Cumbria, and in 2018 was awarded the inaugural Northern Book Prize for her debut novel, Slip of a Fish.