Whale Fall
About This Book
In 1938 a dead whale washes up on the shore of a remote Welsh island. Manod has lived there all her life, and she reads the carcass both as a warning of disaster and as a sign of what might lie beyond the island. She shares a home with her father and her younger sister. After their mother died years earlier, Manod took on the role of mother to her sister, reluctantly but with real devotion. She cannot shake her longing to see life beyond the beautiful but punishing islands her poor family has called home for generations. Then two English ethnographers arrive, hoping to study the island's way of life. Manod sees them as a glimpse of the wider world and as a possible way out. The longer they stay, the more she is drawn to them, and she experiences a sensual awakening of her own. All the while she worries that her community is being misunderstood and exoticized. This debut novel explores loss, isolation and folklore, and the mix of joy and dissonance that comes from discovering yourself outside the community that raised you. It asks what happens when one person's ambition threatens the fabric of a community, and what follows when that ambition is fulfilled. The tone combines luminous prose with sharp wit, and it portrays both a woman and a community on the edge as the outside world presses in.
ISBN: 9780593686010
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