13 Top queer books like Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Cover of Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Salt Slow

By: Julia Armfield

3.99

Format: 193 pages, Hardcover

This collection of stories is about women and their experiences in society, about bodies and the bo…

"She was a gentle sort of horror,"

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

"The night is wide, uncurving, like the earth might be flat and walkable from end to distant end."

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

"Sleeping gave me time off from myself — a delicious sort of respite. Without it I grow overfamiliar, sticky with self-contempt."

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

"Occasionally, I convinced myself I had made it all up — love, attraction, all of it — that I had made it up with everyone I'd ever met."

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

If you liked the queer plot in Salt Slow by Julia Armfield , here is a list of 13 books like this:

Cover of Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

1. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

By: Carmen Maria Machado

3.84

Format: 248 pages, Paperback

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders betwe… read more

Similar categories in Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties: Stories book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • magical realism
  • lgbt
  • feminism
  • short stories
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
"I'm having a crisis of function."

-Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

"None of us will make it to the end."

-Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

"What I say: “Why did you leave her with me?"

-Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

"Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting."

-Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Cover of I Who Have Never Known Men by Ros Schwartz, Jacqueline Harpman

2. I Who Have Never Known Men

By: Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

Format: 208 pages, Paperback

"As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker." A young woman is kept in a cage underg… read more

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • feminism
  • literary fiction
  • fantasy
  • fiction
"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Cover of Rouge by Mona Awad

3. Rouge

By: Mona Awad

3.56

Format: 383 pages, Kindle Edition

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lone… read more

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Cover of Bliss Montage by Ling  Ma

4. Bliss Montage

By: Ling Ma

3.91

Format: 228 pages, Hardcover

A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully… read more

Similar categories in Ling Ma's Bliss Montage book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • short stories
  • fiction
  • fantasy
"To live is to exist within time. To remember is to negate time."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"It doesn't take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone's gaze."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"Maybe you don't know that you're wounded until you receive the salve. The salve that makes everything come back."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"It was a time when the future could have been anything, been anywhere. It was so open that it could actually crush her."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

Cover of Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

5. Monstrilio

By: Gerardo Sámano Córdova

4.14

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

A literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man,… read more

Similar categories in Gerardo Sámano Córdova's Monstrilio book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
"The world was scary. Worse, I was scary in it."

-Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio

"I wanted him to snap, to finally and absolutely lose it. To break. He was withering. To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up…"

-Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio

Cover of Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

6. Paradise Rot

By: Jenny Hval

3.55

Format: 160 pages, Paperback

A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imager… read more

Similar categories in Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
"I took a bite of a Bloody Ploughman. Even the flesh was red. 'Bloody,' Carral said. 'Nice colour,' I answered. 'It looks sinful. I bet that was the apple Eve ate, you know, in the Bible, the forbidde…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

"I'll tell you the fairy tale of the apple. Eve ate the apple, and then Adam came and did so too. Afterwards the apple was forgotten, and it was assumed that it rolled away in the grass while Adam and…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

Cover of Penance by Eliza  Clark

7. Penance

By: Eliza Clark

3.90

Format: 336 pages, ebook

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you li… read more

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Penance book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • horror
"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Cover of Chlorine by Jade Song

8. Chlorine

By: Jade Song

3.72

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between… read more

Similar categories in Jade Song's Chlorine book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
"Nearly every human memory is corrupted by the fact that it is a memory of being human"

-Jade Song, Chlorine

"Would a mermaid who stays at home, much-loved, with two beautiful parents and loving sisters who share everything, be worth memorializing? No."

-Jade Song, Chlorine

"Humans break so easily. They break their bones, their bodies, their hearts. I, too, as a girl, once broke. My head. And when this happened, I, like many other humans, did not allow myself the time an…"

-Jade Song, Chlorine

Cover of Death Valley by Melissa Broder

9. Death Valley

By: Melissa Broder

3.49

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has… read more

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • fantasy
  • fiction
"My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that…"

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

Cover of Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

10. Salt Slow

By: Julia Armfield

3.99

Format: 193 pages, Hardcover

This collection of stories is about women and their experiences in society, about bodies and the bo… read more

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Salt Slow book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • lgbt
  • feminism
  • short stories
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
"She was a gentle sort of horror,"

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

"The night is wide, uncurving, like the earth might be flat and walkable from end to distant end."

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

"Sleeping gave me time off from myself — a delicious sort of respite. Without it I grow overfamiliar, sticky with self-contempt."

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

"Occasionally, I convinced myself I had made it all up — love, attraction, all of it — that I had made it up with everyone I'd ever met."

-Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

Cover of Brutes by Dizz Tate

11. Brutes

By: Dizz Tate

3.18

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debut—a coming-of-age story a… read more

Similar categories in Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • horror
"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Cover of Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

12. Sunburn

By: Chloe Michelle Howarth

4.33

Format: 288 pages, Paperback

Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023' It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish vi… read more

Similar categories in Chloe Michelle Howarth's Sunburn book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • queer
"It's a shame that you can't even come out to me."

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

"People say 'lesbian' sometimes, they say 'dyke' more."

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

"I hope your bed is warm and you sleep well. See you tomorrow, Lucy x"

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

"My heart lurches, as if it wants to leave my awful body and go make a home in her."

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

Cover of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

13. In the Dream House

By: Carmen Maria Machado

4.42

Format: 251 pages, Hardcover

For years Carmen Maria Machado has struggled to articulate her experiences in an abusive same-sex r… read more

Similar categories in Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • lgbt
  • feminism
  • horror
  • queer
"But this story? This one's mine."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

"I thought you died, but writing this, I'm not sure you did."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

"Your heart launches itself against your rib cage like an animal."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

"How do you get someone you want to want you? Why did no one love you?"

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

Cover of Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

14. Cursed Bread

By: Sophie Mackintosh

3.28

Format: 184 pages, Kindle Edition

From the Man Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure comes an elegant and hypnotic new novel of o… read more

Similar categories in Sophie Mackintosh's Cursed Bread book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • horror
"Pain becomes an animal, walking at your side. Pain becomes a home you can carry with you."

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

"The world is only ever one breach away from being unpeeled entirely, one tragedy, one glimpse behind the curtain."

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

"I've been looked at in pity and in fear and I've learned that the only way to really be seen is through desire. To be looked at and found whole. Found alive."

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

"I don't want a book, I don't want the trouble of it, he said. I don't want to get involved, I just want to watch what's going on. I know what's going to happen and then it happens, and I can go outsi…"

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

Cover of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

15. Big Swiss

By: Jen Beagin

3.68

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is … read more

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • queer
"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Cover of Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

16. Ripe

By: Sarah Rose Etter

3.63

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a … read more

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • fantasy
  • fiction
"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

Cover of Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

17. Natural Beauty

By: Ling Ling Huang

3.80

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obs… read more

Similar categories in Ling Ling Huang's Natural Beauty book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • horror
  • queer
"it is still more permitted for women to be mediocre than for them to be fat"

-Ling Ling Huang, Natural Beauty

"It’s unfortunate that I can undermine months of parental reassurance in just a few seconds, but it’s probably better for kids to learn early on that yes, monsters are real."

-Ling Ling Huang, Natural Beauty

"I had always assumed love carried itself easily through various permutations and disintegrations. Now I find myself disassociating them from the people I had known my parents to be. I can't decide wh…"

-Ling Ling Huang, Natural Beauty

Cover of Mrs. S by K.    Patrick

18. Mrs. S

By: K. Patrick

3.63

Format: 240 pages, Kindle Edition

A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transforma… read more

Similar categories in K. Patrick's Mrs. S book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • queer
"I live in hope it is her, I live in fear it is her, it is never her."

-K. Patrick, Mrs. S

Cover of Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

19. Eyes Guts Throat Bones

By: Moïra Fowley-Doyle

4.02

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

What will the end of the world look like? Will it be an old man slowly turned to gold, flowers rain… read more

Similar categories in Moïra Fowley-Doyle's Eyes Guts Throat Bones book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • magical realism
  • lgbt
  • short stories
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
Cover of Fragile Animals by Genevieve Jagger

20. Fragile Animals

By: Genevieve Jagger

3.61

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

When an ex-catholic woman develops a sexual relationship with a vampire, she is forced to confront … read more

Similar categories in Genevieve Jagger's Fragile Animals book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer
Cover of Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn  Harlan

21. Fruiting Bodies: Stories

By: Kathryn Harlan

4.17

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the go… read more

Similar categories in Kathryn Harlan's Fruiting Bodies: Stories book and Julia Armfield's Salt Slow

  • lesbian
  • magical realism
  • lgbt
  • short stories
  • fiction
  • horror
  • fantasy
  • queer

20 best-selling fiction books like Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Transform Your Habits

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Carmen Maria Machado

3.84

Transform Your Habits

I Who Have Never Known Men

Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

Transform Your Habits

Rouge

Mona Awad

3.56

Transform Your Habits

Bliss Montage

Ling Ma

3.91

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11 Best queer books like Fragile Animals by Genevieve Jagger

Transform Your Habits

Perfume & Pain

Anna Dorn

4.06

Transform Your Habits

Lost in the Garden

Adam S. Leslie

3.73

Transform Your Habits

Thirst

Marina Yuszczuk

3.58

Transform Your Habits

Deliver Me

Elle Nash

3.95

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