'Reading this collection is the only thing you need to do right now. 'This debut collection is both wild and wonderful, packed with mythical transformations that take place in the most ordinary of contemporary settings. Armfield is a significant, exciting talent.' - Sam Byers, author of Perfidious Albion and judge of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018 'Unafraid to venture beyond realism's limits, Julia Armfield refashions our contemporary existence as an eerie, care-worn dreamworld, taking our quotidian anxieties and desires and handing them back to us empathetically remade. A distinct new gothic, melancholy, powerful and poised.' - China Mieville, author of The City & The City Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9781529012569 Number of pages: 208 Weight: 332 g Dimensions: 223 x 143 x 26 mm MEDIA REVIEWS

Winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018, Armfield is a writer of sharp, lyrical prose and tilting dark humour - salt slow marks the arrival of an ambitious and singular new voice. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion - turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge. The electrifying debut from the 2018 White Review Short Story Prize Winner

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield