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A review by tesslw
Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
5.0
Whale Fall is not only one of the most beautiful books I’ve read this year, it’s also one that took me most by surprise. I really didn’t know what to expect going into this, but I certainly didn’t anticipate loving it as much as I did.
Set on a fictionalised, remote Welsh island during the late 1930s, we follow Manod, an 18 year old girl who has spent every day of her life so far on the island. Manod lives with her sister and father, a fisherman who is often gone, off to the water’s edge doing the dangerous work to keep them fed. The island’s inhabitants are few - many lost to the war, and many more having sought their fortunes on the mainland, chasing broader horizons. Whilst Manod loves her family, she cannot help but dream of life beyond the island.
One day, a whale becomes beached on the shores of the island, and soon it attracts the attention of two ethanographers, Joan and Edward, from England, who keen to document the whale but also the isolated lives of the islanders whose lives appear fascinating to these researchers. Manod, a bright girl, fluent in both Welsh and English is chosen to be their assistant and translator, and with this, her hopes of an escape from the island are ignited.
Set on a fictionalised, remote Welsh island during the late 1930s, we follow Manod, an 18 year old girl who has spent every day of her life so far on the island. Manod lives with her sister and father, a fisherman who is often gone, off to the water’s edge doing the dangerous work to keep them fed. The island’s inhabitants are few - many lost to the war, and many more having sought their fortunes on the mainland, chasing broader horizons. Whilst Manod loves her family, she cannot help but dream of life beyond the island.
One day, a whale becomes beached on the shores of the island, and soon it attracts the attention of two ethanographers, Joan and Edward, from England, who keen to document the whale but also the isolated lives of the islanders whose lives appear fascinating to these researchers. Manod, a bright girl, fluent in both Welsh and English is chosen to be their assistant and translator, and with this, her hopes of an escape from the island are ignited.
Whalefall is a novel that simmers, somehow - lapping gently at the reader like waves on a shore. It is not dramatic in its prose but it portrays the weight of emotions so beautifully, echoed by the weight of the gently decaying whale that lies at the water’s edge. Interwoven with snippets of Joan and Edward’s increasingly haughty journal entries about the islanders and their ways of life, the bleak landscape of the island is the perfect backdrop for Manod’s disappointments, discoveries and naive attempts to navigate complex emotions and expectations with her visitors.
I don’t always love books with sparse narration like this one, but I adored Whale Fall. I absolutely loved the undertones of folklore and superstition that were woven in too, and the way the entire novel managed to feel somehow windswept, or like a piece of driftwood, salt washed and rolling in the surf.
I don’t always love books with sparse narration like this one, but I adored Whale Fall. I absolutely loved the undertones of folklore and superstition that were woven in too, and the way the entire novel managed to feel somehow windswept, or like a piece of driftwood, salt washed and rolling in the surf.