Slip of a Fish

“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

''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