Book cover for Whale Fall

Whale Fall

Synopsis

Details

25 April 2024
224 pages
9781035024728
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

Evocative and haunting . . . written with a care and restraint that is rare in a debut novel. It teems with visceral imagery
O’Connor’s beautifully evocative debut explores the liminal spaces between aspiration and disappointment, adolescence and adulthood, land and sea . . . a highly impressive coming-of-age tale
An excellent debut . . . Brief but complete, the book is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude . . . To different eyes, the same island might look like a prison or a romantic enclave, but to actually apprehend the truth of a place or person requires patience, nuanced attention and the painstaking accrual of details. Understanding is hard work, O’Connor suggests, especially when we must release our preconceptions. While the researchers fail to grasp this, Manod does not, and her reward by book’s end, painfully earned, is a new and thrilling resolve.
A beautifully nuanced, beguiling first novel, which leaves room for hope. O’Connor has a promising career ahead