Synopsis

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK • 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 “Both blunt and exquisite . . . O’Connor’s excellent debut . . .

is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude.”—Maggie Shipstead, New York Times Book Review "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 Toibin, New York Times bestselling author of Long Island In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island.

For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island'…