A BBC ‘BETWEEN THE COVERS’ BOOK CLUB PICK
'I didn't want it to end' - Maggie O'Farrell
'Powerful . . . written with a calm, luminous precision' - Colm Tóibín
An Observer Best Debut of the Year 2024
It is 1938 and for Manod, a young woman living on a remote island off the coast of Wales, the world looks ready to end just as she is trying to imagine a future for herself. The ominous appearance of a beached whale on the island's shore, and rumours of submarines circling beneath the waves, have villagers steeling themselves for what’s to come. Empty houses remind them of the men taken by the Great War, and of the difficulty of building a life in the island's harsh, salt-stung landscape.
When two anthropologists from the mainland arrive, Manod sees in them a rare moment of opportunity to leave the island and discover the life she has been searching for. But, as she guides them across the island’s cliffs, she becomes entangled in their relationship, and her imagined future begins to seem desperately out of reach.
Elizabeth O’Connor’s beautiful, devastating debut Whale Fall tells a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world on the edge of great tumult.
'The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change' - Anne Enright
Genre: Historical
'I didn't want it to end' - Maggie O'Farrell
'Powerful . . . written with a calm, luminous precision' - Colm Tóibín
An Observer Best Debut of the Year 2024
It is 1938 and for Manod, a young woman living on a remote island off the coast of Wales, the world looks ready to end just as she is trying to imagine a future for herself. The ominous appearance of a beached whale on the island's shore, and rumours of submarines circling beneath the waves, have villagers steeling themselves for what’s to come. Empty houses remind them of the men taken by the Great War, and of the difficulty of building a life in the island's harsh, salt-stung landscape.
When two anthropologists from the mainland arrive, Manod sees in them a rare moment of opportunity to leave the island and discover the life she has been searching for. But, as she guides them across the island’s cliffs, she becomes entangled in their relationship, and her imagined future begins to seem desperately out of reach.
Elizabeth O’Connor’s beautiful, devastating debut Whale Fall tells a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world on the edge of great tumult.
'The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change' - Anne Enright
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change." - Anne Enright
"Mesmerizing. A novel with such presence, both wild and still: utterly exquisite." - Imogen Hermes Gowar
"I absolutely adored Whale Fall. I fell completely under its spell: the quiet beauty of it, the mounting sense of loss, the subtle way that Elizabeth O'Connor handled the exploitation, betrayal and desecration of a small community. Every sentence rang with clarity and authenticity. I felt the salt stinging my cheeks, smelled the smoke from the fires, and more than anything, Manod's hope and longing and fight rooted within me too. It's a triumph; Elizabeth should be so proud." - Elizabeth Macneal
"Whale Fall is an astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O'Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod: I loved seeing the world through her eyes, and I didn't want the novel to end" - Maggie O'Farrell
"I devoured the exquisite Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor. Immersive, elegiac and silvered with salt, it follows a young woman, Manod, and what happens when two anthropologists arrive to study the isolated island community she calls home. Beautiful." - Lizzie Pook
"A haunting, unhurried, unusual debut...O'Connor offers a clear-eyed exploration of our tendency to fetishize the rural, the isolated, and what it means to become an object of study." - Joanna Quinn
"Whale Fall is a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiseled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy" - Colm Tóibín
"Mesmerizing. A novel with such presence, both wild and still: utterly exquisite." - Imogen Hermes Gowar
"I absolutely adored Whale Fall. I fell completely under its spell: the quiet beauty of it, the mounting sense of loss, the subtle way that Elizabeth O'Connor handled the exploitation, betrayal and desecration of a small community. Every sentence rang with clarity and authenticity. I felt the salt stinging my cheeks, smelled the smoke from the fires, and more than anything, Manod's hope and longing and fight rooted within me too. It's a triumph; Elizabeth should be so proud." - Elizabeth Macneal
"Whale Fall is an astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O'Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod: I loved seeing the world through her eyes, and I didn't want the novel to end" - Maggie O'Farrell
"I devoured the exquisite Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor. Immersive, elegiac and silvered with salt, it follows a young woman, Manod, and what happens when two anthropologists arrive to study the isolated island community she calls home. Beautiful." - Lizzie Pook
"A haunting, unhurried, unusual debut...O'Connor offers a clear-eyed exploration of our tendency to fetishize the rural, the isolated, and what it means to become an object of study." - Joanna Quinn
"Whale Fall is a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiseled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy" - Colm Tóibín
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Used availability for Elizabeth O'Connor's Whale Fall