Whale Fall

By Elizabeth O’Connor

Pantheon Books: May 7, 2024

224 pages, $27.00

WHALE FALL is one of those books that sneaks up on you, holds you spellbound, and leaves a big impression. Elizabeth O’Connor’s debut can best be described as a cross between the thorny issues at play in Audrey Magee’s THE COLONY and the spare but powerful novellas of Claire Keegan.

Set in 1938, it concerns the twelve families who live on an inhospitable island off the coast of Wales. Manod is the 18-year-old protagonist, a smart and ambitious girl who is starting to feel restless with the restrictive lifestyle and limited opportunities on the island. She and her younger sister have been raised by their widower father, a fisherman; Manod is fluent in English while her sister refuses to speak anything but Welsh.

When a dead whale washes ashore, Manod finds it both fascinating and ominous. As a metaphor, it could represent the larger world out there (which Manod has never visited), the impending war, or decay and rebirth (as the whale is stripped for its many useful parts). When two ethnographers from Oxford arrive to study the islanders’ life, they take to Manod because she reads and speaks English so well and because she is observant and insightful. Soon she is working as their assistant and liaison to the other islanders.

She is equally intrigued by Edward and Joan, who represent a link to the outside world. While they learn about life on the island, Manod learns about life in England and, from Joan, how some modern women are choosing to live. A foreboding mood hangs over this triangle, which soon becomes fraught with the characters’ varied purposes and ambitions. Each is keeping a secret from the others. This friendship is Manod’s first experience with outsiders and profoundly affects her.

O’Connor expertly handles the complex relationships, descriptions of the island and its hardy residents, and Manod’s slow awakening. This is a slow-paced, pensive story, but I found it completely absorbing, in part because of its palpable sense of time and place and O’Connor’s lovely poetic prose. I cared about Manod, and I think most readers will sympathize with her as well. WHALE FALL is an auspicious debut from a writer I will continue to watch.