Cold Fish Soup cover art

Cold Fish Soup

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Cold Fish Soup

By: Adam Farrer
Narrated by: Adam Farrer
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

A BBC Radio Scotland Audiobook Club Pick

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.

©2022 Adam Farrer (P)2022 Saraband Cultural & Regional Essays Nonfiction Comedy

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Can I Have My Ball Back? cover art
Alan Partridge: Big Beacon cover art
The Orphan Master's Son cover art
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy cover art
Fourteen cover art
Granta cover art
Horror Stories cover art
My Beautiful Psychosis: Making Sense of Madness cover art
Do Not Feed the Bear cover art
Clovenhoof cover art
Are We Home Yet? cover art
The Satsuma Complex cover art
Who Do You Think You Are Maggie Pink? cover art
The House on the Edge of the Cliff cover art

Critic reviews

“Raw, vulnerable, honest … like a warm loving hug … [and] very, very funny.” Alan Bissett, BBC Radio Scotland Audiobook Club

“It reminded me of Victoria Wood – so well-observed … very honest, hopeful.” Bruce Devlin, BBC Radio Scotland Audiobook Club

"Cold Fish Soup understands the oddity, tenderness and brutal ordinariness of small-town life. Adam Farrer is a bold new voice in nonfiction writing. His keen observations are as gentle as they are wry, as attentive to the bleak truths of loss and deprivation as they are to the eccentric humour of humans being entirely themselves... Witty, charming, moving and real." Jenn Ashworth
All stars
Most relevant  
Adam draws you in to his personal experiences from a seaside Town that is quickly being left behind, he adds a roller coaster of humour and sadness about his family life too.

Raw, personal, humorous

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Suicidal author and siblings, a racy and wonderful mother. A most disjointed and yet wonderful family brought together as a entertaining, funny, sad and throughly readable story.

Nipple tassels and suicidal siblings. Eroding coasts and tired seaside towns somehow work.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I loved listening to Adam narrate this. Full of humour and not afraid to be really honest with tough subjects -mental health, suicide, depression,loneliness, rundown seaside towns.
At times I laughed along at his anecdotes about growing up and his family and made lots of parallels with my own. It is real. And at times my eyes filled with tears at some of the experiences he and his family have gone through. As well as those living in Withernsea.
If you want a searingly honest listen full of anecdotes of aliens, gangs of seagulls interspersed with the truth facing people living in seaside towns on the Holderness coast, mental health struggles and desperation, all told with a wry sense of humour then listen to this.
I feel like I know Adam and I feel like I need to go back to the Holderness coast.

Great autoniographical story full of humour

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A beautiful, funny and nostalgic journey back through my childhood by way of Adam’s wonderful storytelling of my home town.

I cannot recommend this enough and you don’t need to be from the east coast of Yorkshire for this to resonate with you, it’s just a wonderful tribute to a loving family, their loss, their struggles but still managed to make by laugh out loud too, I shall laugh about Christopher the seagull for a long time to come!

Couldn’t stop listening…

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have found many similarities, My personal in the moment thing is speeding, I totally get the drawn to water thing as well, I liked to swim down as far as I could to test myself. I was laffing and crying in this book. I think putting your balls on a stone like this, shows you might have learned not to pay to much attention to the crowds. your bro would secretly be proud. and would fart in your face for being sentimental. The sooner a human being picks up we are all dying from the day we are born, and most humans are inhumane. you can ignore the negative sounds to create. The sound of the sea is a good noise to drown it out, until the realisation of it kicks in. This was fantastic and depressing to listen to. Thank you

A man on the edge of sanity, love this book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
UFO's, werewolves, crumbling coastlines and teenage angst, a wonderfully written insight into one man's life with his bonkers family.
Highlighting the not talked about enough issues on men's mental health.
I love this book so much, thank you Adam

I laughed, cried and laughed some more

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Superbly written and masterfully narrated by the author. His voice is richer than Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife. I experienced every human emotion possible during the listening experience. From laughter all the way through to sadness. About an honest a book you’re ever likely to hear. Enthralling from the beginning. Highly recommend. Look forward to the next book from this talented author.

10/10

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was honestly a bit sad when I finished this book, I didn't want it to end. My emotions were all over the place listening to this, Adam narrates it so well. It moves between brutal honesty and hilarious moments so beautifully, an emotional rollercoaster!

A beautiful rollercoaster of emotions

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A touching and often hilarious memoir from a genuinely gifted author. The finest book I’ve read this year.

A brilliant memoir beautifully narrated

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.