Saltwater: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• **Winner of the Portico Prize**Named a Best Debut of Winter by Library JournalA Best Book of January at the Chicago Review of BooksA 2019 pick in the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Elle and Waterstones

• Gorgeous . . . Andrews unspools Lucy’s coming-of-age story in short numbered fragments, prose poems that at first seem random and out of order, but build in a logical sequence all their own . . . Andrews’s writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O’Brien . . . It’s her mission, she has said, to tell the stories of working-class women.

  — Penelope Green, The New York Times Book Review

• An audacious debut, an inventively told and intimate coming-of-age story.

  — Largehearted Boy

• Written with delicate, soul-bearing temperament, followers of Zinzi Clemmons' What We Lose will fawn over Andrews’ warm-blooded coming-of-age debut concerning a young woman coming to grasp with the annals of her estranged upbringing.

  — Paris Close, Paperback Paris

• A meditation on mother-daughter relationships and finding a place to call home . . . The natural untethering that happens between mothers and daughters is remarkably rendered—the heartsickness given gravitas equal to romantic relationships . . . [Jessica Andrews] explores themes like memory, home, womanhood, and mother-daughter relationships with shattering clarity . . . A beautifully written experimental novel.

  — Kirkus

• Engrossing . . . This coming-of-age story will appeal to readers who appreciate strong mother-daughter relationships.

  — Publishers Weekly

• Andrews writes beautiful, unusual descriptions, and short chapters give [Saltwater] a poetic sensibility . . . Andrews’ debut declares her one to watch.

  — Kathy Sexton, Booklist

• A sensitive, gorgeously told story of a young woman’s coming-of-age.

  — Library Journal

• [Saltwater] features something very rare in literary fiction: a working-class heroine, written by a young working-class author . . . The writing is disarmingly honest . . . This is a courageous book dealing frankly with youth, puberty, mother-daughter relationships, class, disability and alcoholism . . . I found parts of this novel intensely moving – I wish I had read it when I was 19.

  — Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, The Guardian

• Jessica Andrews’ debut novel shimmers with promise: it’s one of those books where, from the first pages, you’re grabbed by a distinctive new voice.

  — Holly Williams, Independent (UK)

• Raw, intimate and authentic.

  — Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Financial Times

• Luminous.

  — Observer New Review

• A stunning new voice in British literary fiction.

  — Independent (UK)

• This book is sublime. It dares to be different, to look in a different way. Andrews is not filling anyone’s shoes, she is destroying the shoes and building them from scratch.

  — Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under

• I lived in it. Evocative, sensuous, astute, original, blistering. Sentences to reread and reread.

  — Lucy Jones

• Saltwater moved me to tears on several occasions; here is proof of the poetic idiosyncrasies of every family, of every person’s narrative being worthy of literature, of the fact that a good novel shouldn’t bring voices in from the margins, but travel outwards towards them, and let them tell their own story, in their own voice, in their own, unique way.

  — Andrew McMillan, winner of the Guardian First Novel Prize for Physical

• A book of breathtaking beauty. Saltwater is a visionary novel with prose that gets deep under your skin. The short, sharp chapters thrum with life. Lucy is a memorable character, her journey one that is moving and totally compelling, telling a series of deep truths about the state of our divided nation. Andrews is a major new voice in contemporary British fiction.

  — Alex Preston, author of In Love and War

• Reading Saltwater is an in-body experience. I felt like I had danced all night - awake, alive, good-sore-tired and something else - angry, really angry. Yes, this book showed me the parts of my past to keep but better than that it showed me the parts I must burn to be free.

  — Carmen Marcus, author of When Saints Die