Prototype lands Arnold's 'deeply moving' second novel

Prototype Publishing has landed Lori & Joe, the second novel from Northern Book Prize winner Amy Arnold. 

Jess Chandler, publisher, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Charlotte Seymour at Johnson & Alcock. 

Arnold’s debut Slip of a Fish (And Other Stories) won the 2018 Northern Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize. Her second novel, Lori & Joe, is set in the Lake District over the span of a day, following Lori after she finds her partner dead.

The publisher said: "Told through musical prose that flits between past and present, reflecting on the characters’ relationship and around a terrible secret that Lori has never revealed, the novel is a moving story of entrapment, isolation and desire." 

Arnold commented: "Lori & Joe is about a walk. It’s about a death and a life, about music and marriage and the things that fall between the cracks. It grew out of long hours walking over the fells, paying attention — to thought, to landscape, to movement. I have been as faithful to ‘the way things are’ as I know how. I am deeply grateful to Prototype for giving Lori & Joe a home on a list that stands out as being gloriously experimental."

Chandler said:  "I first read Lori & Joe in one entranced sitting, and it is a privilege to be publishing this extraordinary book. Amy’s voice is distinct and unaffected; her storytelling sparse, direct and raw; her characters vulnerable, flawed and vividly real; her acute understanding of place and landscape central to it all. This is a deeply moving novel which takes us inside the unsettled mind of its protagonist for just a few hours, yet tells the story of a relationship of many decades."