How to Gut a Fish

Reviews

The stories in this collection are unsettling, unpredictable, and brilliant In sumptuous and evocative prose, Sheila Armstrong writes stories that are unnerving and unsettling. Stories which make you go, wait, wait, what was that? Armstrong’s short stories make tremendously good company, each one transported me to a place I’d never been before. Dark, devilishly well written and full of atmosphere, How to Gut a Fish is one of the most original and affecting short story collections I’ve read in years. Beautifully written, utterly original and more than a teeny bit disturbing. Do you know when you read a sentence that is so good, it does weird things to your insides? You kind of shudder with satisfaction and hope for more. Well, I am addicted to good sentences, and Sheila Armstrong is my dealer. The stories in How to Gut a Fish are gorgeously weird, inspiring curiosity both on and off the page. If you’re anything like me, they will send you into a fit of ferocious googling: What is star jelly? How old is the moon? The story titles are works of art in themselves. This is the good stuff. Hook it to my veins. This collection of 11 stories is, from first to last, poised, distinctive and excellent Has a remarkable ability to summon a stingingly tangible sense of place in a few pen strokes. Again and again in her debut short story collection she lulls us and grounds us with honed, poetic descriptions of the natural landscape, the vagaries of the weather and the commonplace activities of everyday folk — only to introduce an element of strangeness or violence that makes you suddenly regard the ordinary with deep suspicion … Armstrong beguiles even as she totally unsettles you Assured … impressive … Armstrong has a talent for disrupting our expectations and her prose is sensorily rich … Her evocations of landscape are extraordinary Armstrong’s stories are rich with description, sight and sounds, textures and scents. The details come quickly, compressed, in close succession; the writing is forever being infused by sensations, both strange and new … Disquieting material, equanimous prose; in combining the two, Armstrong’s stories have a sinister finesse This exquisitely wrought collection made me feel as if I were inhabiting another realm: sensuous, tactile, beautiful and disturbing. Sheila Armstrong's hypnotic prose has a haunting, lingering, dreamlike effect. It’s not often I open a book to find prose this exciting, original and frankly envy-inducing. Line by line, these stories set a series of small fires in my head, and they’re still burning Uneasy, elegant … Armstrong delights in these contrasts, a delicious off-kilter sensibility that is spun out in silky prose and a startling turn of phrase … Weirdly wonderful I loved it. I found the stories completely hypnotic and strange. (Armstrong) has a meditative and mesmerising voice, and her description of everyday life is perceptive and profound. A triumph ... A book entirely of and for the moment, possessed of the courage to document the horrors of a world unravelling and the wit to enhance its unflinching worldview with a wry dose of humanity Armstrong is a writer who must be noticed and read ... There are remarkable moments of clarity and beauty, making this an impressive and must-read debut. It is, most notably, the brilliant and disconcerting Red Market — an exceptional and unforgettable story that will forge How to Gut a Fish as a superb debut collection A striking, idiosyncratic collection … Beautifully expressed, studded with poetic images and the occasional flashes of humour A debut collection of short stories that brings readers uncomfortably close to the mortality of a set of memorable characters Expand reviews