#ColdFishSoup by Adam Farrer @AdamJFarrer @SarabandBooks @RandomTTours #BookReview

Title: Cold Fish Soup by Adam Farrer 

Publisher: Saraband

Date Published: 4th August 2022

Genre: Non fiction/Memoir

Description:

Unlikely tales from a crumbling Yorkshire coastal town take centre stage in the debut memoir by “new Alan Bennett” 

A series of funny, insightful meditations about life and death on the margins – from the crumbling cliffs to family, mental health and the town’s eccentric inhabitants.

Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops.

While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal. His insights on family, friendship, male mental health and suicide are revealed in stories of reinvention, rapacious seagulls, interdimensional werewolves, burlesque dancing pensioners, and his compulsion towards the sea.

Cold Fish Soup is an affectionate look at a place and its inhabitants, and the ways in which they can shape and influence someone, especially of an impressionable age. Adam’s account explores what it means to love and be shaped by a place that is under threat, and the hope – and hilarity – that can be found in community.

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 won the 2021 NorthBound Book Award.

Review:

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of Cold Fish Soup. All opinions are my own. 

Cold Fish Soup is part memoir, part love letter to the small coastal town of Withernsea in Yorkshire. 

I don’t read much non-fiction, but Cold Fish Soup is exactly the kind of non-fiction I like, where I’m taken on a journey into someone’s thoughts and memories, creating a vivid picture of everything happening within the book.

Along the way, we get to know quite a few distinctive, if at times a little eccentric, people that add humour and entertainment to the story. From paranormal investigators to Adam’s troubled older brother Robert to his burlesque dancing mother. Even his ancient adopted dog, Millie, was given her own spotlight. 

I’m from the coast myself and the portrayal of Withernsea in the book reminded me of my own hometown when I was young. Albeit my part of the world is not crumbling into the sea, but it does capture the neglect and despondency that seaside towns, especially in the north, have suffered from over the years. 

There is a lot of honesty in this book, especially when it comes to the author’s own mental health journey and his thoughts on his older brother Robert’s suicide. I appreciated him being so open about these tough subjects.

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.

About Adam Farrer:

Adam Farrer is a writer and editor who has performed at festivals and events including Manchester Literature Festival and the Northern Lights Writers Conference. His work has been published in the anthology Test Signal and he edits the creative non-fiction journal The Real Story, as well as teaching writing workshops. Cold Fish Soup is his first book. Adam Farrer has previously been a photo lab technician, a kitchen porter, the voice of an automated phone system, an illustrator, ceramicist, musician, music journalist, and he currently works at the University of Salford. He is available for interview.