I enjoyed this book so much that I can’t believe it’s a debut! It is a short read that I took a while to finish, but the details are vivid enough to remember. I appreciated the author’s take on British colonialism and the ending she gave the main character, Manod, who was naive to start but hopeful and determined at the end.

WHALE FALL by Elizabeth O’Connor (a debut novel) is set in an unnamed Welsh island in 1938. Not long after a dead whale washes up on the shores (an ominous premonition?) two English ethnographers arrive with the purpose of studying the island culture and the people who populate it . Manod, an eighteen year old girl who lives in the island with her father and a younger sister, will act as interpreter since many of the islanders can only speak welsh. She will become a key figure in the ethnographers endeavor and this new role will make her feel empowered and useful, beyond what is expected of her and her daily tasks as a member of the community. But even more important, it will awaken in her the possibility of leaving the island.But reality and the human condition will prevail over her dreams.
The narration is fantastic and it is structured in fragments such as the ethnographers notes, with songs and folktales collected from the islanders, and the first person narration from Manod’s perspective. The prose is beautifully crafted and deeply lyrical with powerful imagery. You can feel the cold, the wind, the dampness in the air, the smells of a fishing island. And the carcass of the whale slowly rotting on the shore.
This book is brief and lovely and I highly recommend it.

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor was such a gem of a book and a joy to read. The prose is lovely and O'Connor really transports the reader to a remote Welsh island in the late 1930s.
We meet Manod who only knows life on the island, living with her father and taking care of her younger sister. Manod knows there is more to life than the island, and dreams of exploring it. Two things happen at the same time that threaten to disrupt life on the island, one is a dead whale washing up on shore, and the second is two English ethnographers arriving to study the people of the island.
They bring to light ideas of the mainland for Manod and also the thought of escape. This is a story of an awakening in Manod, of a young woman with a life ahead of her full of promise, balancing on trusting a fragile relationship with strangers that also threatens the entire island.
I really enjoyed that O'Connor managed to somehow make at once a detailed story, but at the same time, sparse like the island. I felt the cold ocean air, I felt being on the beach and watching the fisherman, I saw the inside of the house. Quite a stunning debut!

To say I absolutely adored this book feels like an understatement! It’s poetic, and beautifully written. Descriptive in a way that touched all my senses. I was able to ‘feel’ the wind, as well as taste and smell the salt, the sea and the decomposition of the whale and other sea life. This novel was part coming of age and sexual awakening, part mystery and of course touched on community on a small isolated island. I have to say though, my favorite aspect of this book was the Welsh and island folklore, with its touch of magical realism. Reminiscent of Alice Hoffman, one of my favorite authors; I would read the next Elizabeth O’Connor in a heart beat!
Thanks for the early read on this.

This is a stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community. I loved Elizabeth's writing style, her focus on loneliness and community exploitation, and the beauty of our world and nature. It was such a unique topic, beautifully presented by the author. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Whale Fall took me a minute to get into, but ended up being a poignant, thoughtful, and genuinely emotional look at what read to me as some sort of twisted colonialism. Elizabeth O'Connor writes heartbreak and loneliness with such subtle beauty and all of the vividness of the mind of a teenage girl. It's a very character-driven novel, and we've already admitted that I have a little bit of a soft spot for that compared to plot-driven novels, so keep that in mind.

It's short, soft, quiet, and will work your way into your heart. What a stunning debut novel! I've only docked a star because it was a little slow for me, and certain things just didn't gel 100%, but this is better considered a 4.5 rounded down.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for a review!

I loved the atmosphere of this novel. The prose was beautiful,as were the descriptions of the surroundings. The book was written in a style I don't usually like, but I wanted to find out more about what happens to the main character,so I read on, and so glad I did. A very beautiful book.

I read and absolutely adored "Whale Fall." Elizabeth's debut is spectacular: beautifully written, compelling, mysterious, seductive, etc. It's understandable why so many publishers were eager to acquire her debut. Readers who enjoyed "The Light Between Oceans" will ADORE this book.

"The island that's in your head. I don't think it exists."

When you first meet Manod, you understand that you're in the head of a young adult who is so very bored with her own life, slightly out of sync with the world around her. She is intelligent and living in a fog of monotony.

As the story progresses, you feel the fog slip away. First through interest, then through slow building anger and indignation. And you get angry and indignant with her.

This novel is superb. Very little actually happens, but I was engaged throughout. It is largely written as Manod's stream of conscious, with semi-chronological vignettes, and occasional flashbacks. Time is nebulous.

At times, particularly earlier on, it has the cadence of a horror story. At no point would it feel especially out of place for a Lovecraftian horror to emerge from the sea. It creates a very interesting sort of tension. The sea looms, the whale looms, the researchers loom.

This one might require a reread or two to fully absorb. Fantastic debut.

ARC provided by NetGalley.

What a haunting little novel. I felt for this protagonist so much. Conveyed the desolation and harm of isolated living and cultures colliding.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC.

Whale Fall is the stunning debut novel from Elizabeth O'Connor. Its not a long book at just 224 pages, but it sure does pack a punch. I really enjoyed this one, its thoughtful and heartfelt.

I feel I'm in the minority here:

This book was not for me. I disliked the writing style. The storyline didn't flow in a way that I felt moved naturally and it couldn't keep my attention. The main character lacked substance and intelligence.

It should not take a person almost 20 days to read this book, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I was committed to finding out what happens but even when it did, it was so uneventful and anti-climactic that I had to go back and re-read to remind myself how it all ended.

What an unusual book -- it is almost stream of consciousness writing as it bounces all over with no transitions. I found this style of writing jarring and uncomfortable read so have put the book aside for when I have two weeks to read this type of novel. The primary character is intriguing so I want to find out what happens to her.

Whale Fall is a short, poetic book about a young woman and her desire for a life outside of her remote Welsh Island. Manod, 18, lives with her father and sister on an island that is battered by the weather. Only about 50 individuals are hearty enough to rough the conditions and the population declines yearly. Islanders are secluded from news of the world (the time frame is just before WWII) and clothing is decades out of style.

A whale washes up on shore one day and the island folk gather to observe and deal with it in their unique way. Not long after, two ethnographers show up to study the lives of the islanders. Manod, who speaks English, works with the scientists translating the islanders’ Welsh. She is fascinated by the glimpse of life offered her through these two individuals and works out a plan to leave the island for the larger world outside.

It’s hard to believe that this is a debut novel. It’s an accomplished work of beautiful prose. It perfectly fits the category of literary fiction, where character development is prioritized over plot. Recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf publishing for access to this e-ARC in exchange for my opinions.

What a beautiful totally-original novel! I finished it hours ago and haven't stopped thinking about it. The "fall" of this magnificent whale on the shore of an island with a dwindling population and whose customs and traditions are questioned and studied by two researchers that land on the island. The small book holds a tension throughout where I was waiting for something to happen all while this whale is rotting on the shore. The whale as a metaphor for the community and the eroding of the culture of the island's inhabitants hits you in the face in a rich, nuanced way. The structure of the book is comprised of short chapters which created additional pressure moving forward the events more quickly. It's a book you'll read in one sitting and you'll be glad you did. This is a powerful, haunting, thoughtful, and totally original debut.

This is a beautiful and devastating novel about innocence and exploitation and opportunity and manipulation. Manod lives with her father and younger sister on a tiny, Welsh-speaking island. Her fate seems to be to marry one of the village boys, but she doesn't want to follow island traditions, and seeks--without knowing how--to have a wider life. When English-speaking researchers come to the island and hire her to translate for them, she begins to see ways of leaving and places to go. The reader knows what will happen--they way the researchers falsify images and documents and falsify the meaning of their relationships with Manod--but we can only read and envision it as it occurs, and feel relief when Manod determines to be in control her own life.

Manod has spent her whole life on the little Welsh island that generations of her family has lived before her. A dead whale on the shore brings strange feelings for Manod, a sense of the dangers that come from outside the insular bubble of her island. I loved the writing of this book. The way the prose flowed through events and feelings.

A couple of English ethnographers arrive and turn things upside down for Manod. While she is first cautious of them, she is quickly enthralled by them both. There is a great sense of meaning these two ultimately bring Manod, especially Joan. It helps her question her life on the island, her sexuality and opens her up a little bit.

I thought this was so well done. I was actually shocked at how short this was, kind of wishing we got more. This was a really beautiful and meaningful read, and I loved how protective Manod was of her culture and her island.

This debut novel, which comes out in May of 2024, is haunting, poignant, and ultimately heart-rending.

Set in the final months of 1938, on a fictional Welsh island of fewer than 50 residents, Manod is an 18-year-old girl facing a bleak and unsure future. Her mother's dead, leaving her to fill the role for her lobster-fisherman father, and her younger sister.

At the beginning of the book, a whale washes up onto the beach and there's some concern it's an omen (good or bad?). And then shortly afterward, two English ethnographers arrive to do a case study of the islanders and their farming-fishing way of life. Because Manod speaks English well, she works with them and sees in them a possible future and escape from the island.

The novel is written in a series of vignettes, journal entries from the English pair, and transcriptions of folktales and songs from the islanders.

It's a quiet book, but in its quietness lies its strength. You feel drawn into their lives, their struggles, their thwarted dreams, the fear of the impending war, and the bleakness of their alternatives. This one is definitely worth the brief time it takes to read.

I was so surprised that this was a debut! Her prose was lovely and it completely transported me to the seemingly dreary island. Definitely add this to your list for the spring!

My favorite genre of book is "books about nothing, but somehow everything" and this debut novel fits that description perfectly.

A whale washes up on the shore of a sparsely populated Welsh Island. Some social researchers come to study and write about the island. Our protagonist, 18 year old Manod, works for the researchers, then they leave. That's it, that is the whole story. Except...

The story is really about coming of age in a small life and what happens when the big world encroaches on that space. Are the perceptions of the sheltered island residents, or the worldly researches, the truth? Are the ways the researchers bend the island life to suit their needs selfish, or a sign of the need for change? Is everything Manod needs here, or out in the world? What is the harm in outdated clothing and old fashioned ways when war is yet again on the horizon? The beautifully written (though sometimes disjointed, maybe just a pre-final-edits phenomena) prose quietly and descriptively asks all these questions of the reader and Manon. For a book that is not plot, or even really character driven, the narrative says so much between the lines.

The writing of time and place is breathtaking. O'Connor captures the island life perfectly. The reader, while privy to the historical context and what is happening elsewhere, experiences life on the island intimately. With the ever-looming whale carcass as a clever metaphor for the erosion of Manod's view of life on the island, without too much exposition, we all get to see Manod outgrow her life and yearn for more. If you want to be transported to a time and place far away, this book will sweep you right away.

For a short debut novel Whale Fall delivers the full literary experience.