Description

Revisit the haunting debut short story collection from the Booker-shortlisted author of Everything Under.

‘Full of unabashedly, refreshingly angry women… In a year that made me furious, Daisy Johnson’s Fen was a howl I didn’t know I needed’ Celeste Ng

The Fen is a liminal land. Real people live their lives here. They wrestle with sex and desire, with everyday routine. But the wild is always close at hand, ready to erupt.

This is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger. So here a teenager may starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl. A woman might give birth to a, well, what?

‘Instant classic…a bold, take-no-prisoners collection situated somewhere between Angela Carter and Deborah Levy’ Jeff VanderMeer

Publisher Review

"Johnson's heady broth of folklore, female sexuality and fenland landscape reads like a mix of Graham Swift and Angela Carter... For atmosphere, originality and plain chutzpah, this is an impressive first collection." -- Sarah Crown * Guardian * "Poetic, risky... Johnson's slippery and sensual stories-cum-chapters have an amphibious elemental quality and a contemporary provincial witchiness of their own." -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times * "There is big, dangerous vitality herein - this book marks the emergence of a great, stomping, wall-knocking talent." -- Kevin Barry "Reading the stories brought the sense of being trapped in a room slowly, but very surely, filling up with water. You think: this can't be happening. Meanwhile, hold your breath against the certainty it surely is." -- Cynan Jones, author of The Dig "Within these magical, ingenious stories lies all of the angst, horror and beauty of adolescence. A brilliant achievement." -- Evie Wyld "In a year that made me furious, Daisy Johnson's Fen was a howl I didn't know I needed. [...] It's hauntingly written and full of unabashedly, refreshingly angry women who are hungry - both figuratively and literally - for things long denied them." -- Celeste Ng