Praise for Cold Fish Soup
A selection of review quotes and endorsements for Cold Fish Soup, which is available here.
“Vividly documents the minutiae of small-town life on the margins … captures it beautifully.”
The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice
'Not only one of the funniest books I've read about erosion and suicide, but one of the funniest books I've read full-stop.'
Richard Smyth, author of The Jay, The Beech And The Limpetshell
‘a nuanced, well-structured and memorable memoir; it deservedly won the Northbound Book Award.’
Andrew Martin, The Times Literary Supplement.
“It’s rendered in a deprecating sotto voce whose subtle desperation tugs the narrative along with no little panache, dialogue rings bathetically true and a melancholy cadence graces the style…the piercing authenticity of a David Sedaris or an Alan Bennett.”
Danny Moran, About Manchester
“Witty and introspective … moving … elegiac … vivid evocations of the landscape … Echoing the canny writing of David Sedaris, Farrer has a knack for wringing hilarity from life’s grim moments … this meditation on the beauty of impermanence charms.”
Publishers Weekly
“Adam is very, very funny and so I was expecting to laugh while reading Cold Fish Soup, but I didn’t know I’d also be moved to tears. It is such a genuine story and a rare insight into male, and particularly adolescent male, mental health. The serious subject matters are given weight and treated with care, and it’s all balanced with tremendous moments of light, warmth and humour.”
Gaynor Jones, Northern Soul Best Reads of 2022
“In a book as laced with humanity as it is with the presence of the North Sea, Adam Farrer asks that you fall in love with the overlooked, with that which is crumbling and destined to be lost to the sea. I fell for it hard.”
Wyl Menmuir, Booker-listed author of The Draw of the Sea
“Cold Fish Soup is a tragic-comic masterpiece about adolescence, grief and loss, that's also a psychogeographic love letter to the isolated Withernsea coast in East Yorkshire where he grew up. This has been getting all the plaudits, and deservedly so.”
Leeds Libraries, Books of 2022.
“Breathtakingly good.”
Lauren Brown, author of Hands: An Anxious Mind Unpicked.
“[Farrer] documents his own personal history with guile and candour, but it is the tenderness with which he introduces his family that enriches the reading experience … Farrer has an uncanny grasp of his chosen form’s mechanics … he writes with a suppleness that gifts his stories a winning momentum … [The book] emerges as a gnarly companion piece to Amy Liptrot’s delicate ode to Orkney The Outrun … and Adam Buxton’s Ramble Book … Cold Fish Soup is like nothing else you will read this year: a lyrical and courageous exercise in uncovering one’s own personal history.”
Gary Kaill, Lunate magazine
“Funny and moving.”
Tony Walsh, Poet
“Adam observes his stretch of the Yorkshire coast with empathy and wit, with an astute understanding of those otherworld, forgotten towns, battered by the sea and neglect. He captures what it is to be an outsider in the edgelands.”
Jools Abrams, author of Girl in the Mirror.
“Adam Farrer’s beautifully written collection of linked personal essays about his hometown of Withernsea is insightful, challenging, moving and entertaining – everything that we hoped for from the third winner of the NorthBound Book Award. It’s a book that I can’t wait to see published by Saraband so that other readers can share the unforgettable reading experience that I’ve been fortunate to have.”
Will Mackie, New Writing North
“A funny, poignant episodic memoir and a love letter to a wrecked seaside town…I read the first page & was hooked in by Adam’s honest, humorous, vulnerable voice… I feel sad I’ve finished it.”
Kate Fox, Stand-up Poet, Broadcaster and author of Where There’s Much There’s Bras: : The Lost Stories of the Amazing Women of the North
“Adam Farrer’s manuscript brings extraordinary care, humour, and honesty to places and lives that are often overlooked.”
Dr JT Welsch, Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York
“[a] stunning new collection of essays, which beautifully blend memoir and place writing… clear-eyed, unsentimental and very funny.”
David Coates, Blackwell’s
“a heart-warming read, told with a lot of humour and honesty… I can't recommend this book highly enough. My non-fiction book of the year.”
“Cold Fish Soup is so wide-ranging and thought-provoking, covering masculinity, mental health, sense of belonging, carving out a creative life in a geographically marginalised place, and burlesque, amongst other things. It drew me in, and kept me hooked, and made me both cry and laugh heartily and fully. It is a love letter to Withernsea and all the people in it, its crumbling cliffs, its strange beauties and its losses, that made me love Withernsea too.”
Dr Polly Atkin, Poet and Academic, author of Much With Body and Recovering Dorothy.
“This is as big a story as any fiction, it is intimate, funny, sad, life affirming…The writing is absolutely beautiful, eloquent but grounded, whisking you between coastal scenery and family sitting rooms; between the comic and the tragic. This is a book with the biggest characters and the most incredible setting.”
“Adam has pulled off a rare combination of confronting grave, even taboo subjects with clarity and sensitivity alongside glimpses of pure humour in his descriptions of an undeniably quirky town, community and family. Cold Fish Soup is unforgettable, providing real insight into male mental health and an affectionate account of a downtrodden seaside resort. It’s an outstanding read and a worthy winner.”
Sara Hunt, Saraband Books
“A truly wonderful and ingenious writer, [Adam’s] funny, warm brain on the page is nothing short of delicious.”
Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals and Adults.
“Raw, vulnerable, honest … like a warm loving hug … [and] very, very funny.”
Alan Bissett, BBC Radio Scotland Audiobook Club
“A strong, wry voice. Brilliant and insightful.”
Sara Helen Binney, Editor at Bloomsbury Raven
“[Adam’s] personal essays have a lightness of touch, a humour that is never superficial or sentimental, an acute observational eye that is honest though never cruel, and – rare, in my experience – a gentle and careful interest in the experiences of women and the working class. Adam’s work, though often autobiographical, is characterised by a curiosity about other people and the world and he is very much a writer who has a commitment to evoking and celebrating the hidden stories and histories of forgotten landscapes.”
Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted: A Love Story and Notes Made While Falling.
“It reminded me of Victoria Wood – so well-observed … very honest, hopeful.”
Bruce Devlin, BBC Radio Scotland Audiobook Club
“Adam is an up-and-coming author who can articulate personal trauma and social issues in a relatable style – always unsentimental, often funny. He has been dubbed “the new Alan Bennett” and “a Yorkshire David Sedaris”… Cold Fish Soup is a wonderfully written book that will take your emotions on a rollercoaster of a ride from laugh out loud funny, to melancholy and tender and a whole load of other feelings in between.”
“Cold Fish Soup is wide-ranging, moving, and brilliantly funny.”
‘Adam Farrer is a writer with a wry eye for details and a capacity of phrase that occasionally reaches the sublime… [a} tender portrait of family…carves a carefully balanced line between humour and pathos’
Alison Armstrong, 3:AM Magazine
“I’ve seen somebody compare Farrer’s writing to Alan Bennett and I can 100% see that, the wonderful characters and wit feels very much like The Lady in the Van. I have enjoyed every page, all the lows, all the highs and the many many laughs. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐”
Jason Denness, Gnome Appreciation Society
“Cold Fish Soup understands the oddity, tenderness and brutal ordinariness of small town life. Adam Farrer is a bold new voice in nonfiction writing. His keen observations are as gentle as they are wry, as attentive to the bleak truths of loss and deprivation as they are to the eccentric humour of humans being entirely themselves. Cold Fish Soup is the memoir of a man made by a place you might not have heard of, but which after reading this, you won't easily forget. Witty, charming, moving and real.”
Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted: A Love Story and Notes Made While Falling.
‘What a glorious book! Just beautiful. Adam dances down that line between happy and sad with such sure-footed grace. It underlines that there is no such thing as 'an ordinary life' or indeed an 'ordinary place'.’
Catherine Simpson, author of One Body and When I Had a Little Sister.
“Witty, moving, wry, insightful and caring in how it deals with its subject matter.”
The Bookseller, Category Highlight, annual preview