Cold Fish Soup

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It drew me in, and kept me hooked, through all diversions and detours in time and narrative, and made me both cry and laugh heartily and fully. Today I added carrots, chunks of gold potatoes and yes, nopales, instead of the green beans I usually use.

Adam Farrer

If you want an even smoother soup, you can take the extra step of pressing the purée through a sieve with a rubber spatula. A particular highlight for me was the description of the brief conversations with the author’s mother, who displays her defiant love of life through her eccentric relation to it, delighting no doubt in her own ability to shock the pessimistic-leaning, and slightly embarrassed, sensibilities of her son. The mix of eccentricity and banality that lies at the heart of every family, the nuanced details of family relations and place in the family structure, the distinctive family lexicon, the way every family harbours within itself its own dictionaries and grammar, its definitive and peculiar logic, it own way of seeing the world and negotiating its survival within it. Using an affiliate link doesn't cost you anything, but it does help support what we do in a small way.

How language itself becomes key to coping with tragedy, circling the contours of it to get closer to the truth of a person lost. It is a gem of a book, an unflinching look at Withernsea, the lure of the seaside town for the hopeless: ‘People whose lives have crumbled often move to the seaside in the hope of recapturing their lives when they were at their best. There is a lot of discussion about death (Withernsea seems to get a rather large share) and how it affects those left behind, and these scenes are written with such care that you also feel the loss…but when Farrer’s sense of humour kicks in it feels like the sun breaking through the dark clouds on a typical summer’s day, very uplifting.

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You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. It starts off with Adam stood on the edge of a cliff, ready to step off, which of course, he didn't go through with this as he is very much still here (I very happily met him not so long ago).

Often served with uszkadumplings (“the little ears”) or paszteciki (cabbage and/or mushroom filled pastries). Nobody knows for sure what the original recipe was, and the way of preparing Ukha has changed over the years. Cold Fish Soupis a memoir of linked pieces reflecting upon aspects of life in the author’s former hometown, the Yorkshire coastal resort town of Withernsea. Adam Farrer said: “During the writing of my manuscript, I lost count of the times when I wondered why I was doing it.