Cold Fish Soup

Winner of the NorthBound Book Award, shortlisted for an Independent Publishing Audiobook Award 2023, and a BBC Radio Scotland Audiobook Club Pick.

"Witty and introspective … Echoing the canny writing of David Sedaris … this meditation on the beauty of impermanence charms.” Publishers Weekly

Cold Fish Soup is a series of meditations, often humorous, about life and death in a crumbling, forgotten English seaside town, and how people can find sanctuary and curious tales in the most unexpected places.

Before teenager Adam Farrer relocated with his family to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of this isolated, faded seaside town in a down-trodden part of Yorkshire, northern England. The move represented just one thing to him: a chance to leave the insecurities of adolescence behind. He could do that anywhere. But he didn’t anticipate how much he’d grow to love the quirks of the town, nor care about its eroding cliffs and declining high street.

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 writing has been compared to Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood and David Sedaris. His 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.