Whale Fall

<p><b>'I didn't want it to end' - Maggie O'Farrell<br>'Powerful . . . written with a calm, luminous precision' - Colm Tóibín<br>An <i>Observer</i> Best Debut of the Year 2024</b><br>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&rsquo;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.<br><br>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&rsquo;s cliffs, she becomes entangled in their relationship, and her imagined future begins to seem desperately out of reach.<br><br><b>Elizabeth O&rsquo;Connor&rsquo;s beautiful, devastating debut <i>Whale Fall</i> tells a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world on the edge of great tumult.</b><br><br>'The quiet cadences of <i>Whale Fall</i> contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change' - <b>Anne Enright</b></p>