Slip of a Fish

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.

'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