
Shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize
Winner of the 2018 Northern Book Prize
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.
"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
''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
'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.'White Review
'[an] absorbing' debut...an impressive portrait of motherhood, loss and fragility.'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