Julia Armfield

This collection of short stories is about women and their experiences in society, about bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of its characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession and love. Throughout the collection, women become insects, men turn to stone, a city becomes insomniac and bodies are picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sea side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to the bodies of its inhabitants. Blending the mythic and the gothic, the collection considers characters in motion - turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new.

From Julia Armfield, the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018, salt slow is an extraordinary collection of short stories that are sure to dazzle and shock.

salt slow

Revna

Abigail Mills

 his face is swollen and his lips are splitting at the sides. They are both lunatic on salt water. 

We should get moving, he says, and she knows he is growing increasingly anxious of the scale of things, above and below. Sometimes they see lights below the water, the bioluminescence of anglerfish and vampire and ctl tent with one squid grown too large and too close to the surface. beside her an It occurs to her that all of them, birds and fish and sailors, have been out on the water too long. Her feet are growing webbed, although they don't talk about that. Sometimes at night he takes his apple knife to the delicate membranes between her toes, but they don't talk about that either. 

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