Whale Fall

December 1, 2023

Set in 1938 on a Welsh Island, O'Connor's debut explores isolation and self-discovery as a young woman, forced into adulthood by the death of her mother, yearns for life beyond the shores of her tiny community. When two English ethnographers arrive, community, family, and self are put on the precipice. Prepub Alert.

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March 15, 2024
O'Connor's debut novel is set in 1938 on a remote island off the coast of Wales and centers Manod, an 18-year-old who has lived there her entire life. With her fisherman father, Tad, offbeat younger sister, Llinos, and beloved dog, Elis, Manod battles the elements on the rocky outcrop to survive. Following the untimely death of their mother years prior, she feels responsible for Llinos' upbringing. O'Connor is careful not to romanticize the island, depicting the harsh living conditions in graphic prose: "The wind makes red meat of us." Alongside the news of increased political tension in Europe, a beached whale captivates the small, tightknit community, which is becoming increasingly conscious of its isolation. That so many families have abandoned the island for the mainland, leaving "more empty houses on the island than inhabited ones," increases that sense of dislocation. When English ethnographers Edward and Joan arrive to document the islanders' way of life, they enlist Manod to provide her unique insight into the project, and she begins to wonder if an academic career might provide an escape preferable to marriage. This renewed sense of possibility and appreciation for her home--"I had never looked closely at the island. I had never thought it was interesting, or beautiful"--coincides with a sensual awakening. Where her sexuality before the arrival of the scholars might appear modern--she has sex with a local boy without shame--it's strikingly passive: "saying yes to him, kissing him, other things, made me feel slightly less peculiar than I did." Appraising the island and herself through an outsider's gaze seems to awaken Manod's senses, making her acutely aware of her body and desire. As the academics set about documenting the traditions, folklores, and lifestyles of the islanders, Manod's sense of otherness increases--with the pair exoticizing the islanders to such a degree that their research is utterly compromised. O'Connor prompts us to consider what it is to experience ourselves--and our cultures--through strangers' eyes. A beautiful meditation on the profound effects of seeing and being seen.

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Starred review from March 25, 2024
In this luminous first novel, an isolated community of 12 families encounters a pair of outsiders on their small island off the coast of Wales in 1938. Manod, 18, lives with her lobsterman father and younger sister and sees a circumscribed future for herself on the remote and rugged island. Then a dead whale washes up on the beach. This incident is immediately followed by the arrival of an English couple, Edward and Joan, anthropologists from Oxford who have come to the island to study its inhabitants for an ethnographic paper they plan to coauthor. Manod demonstrates her ambition and intelligence to the couple, and they ask her to serve as their secretary and translator, given that few others in the community speak English. As the villagers are drawn by curiosity to the whale, which becomes a site of children’s play and a shrine to the decomposing beast, Manod falls under Joan’s spell for one reason and Edward’s for another, leading her to make some hard decisions about the life she ultimately wants to lead. The simplicity of the island folk and their daily existence is mirrored in the deceptive plainness of O’Connor’s prose and in Manod’s crystal-clear gaze. Literary voyagers looking for new worlds should add this to their itinerary. Agent: Matthew Marland, RCW Literary.

May 1, 2024
On her small Welsh island in 1938, Manod lives a simple life caring for her younger sister after their mother's death. Though she succeeded in school, she sees few avenues through which her life will change. ""I had no mother to ask. All of my decisions felt like trying to catch something that did not exist until I caught it."" When the whale washes up on shore, news of its demise breaks the island's isolation as two ethnographers from Oxford arrive to study the island and its people. Manod becomes their secretary and translator and sees the woman, Joan, exemplifying a kind of independent and educated life Manod begins to desire for herself. Interspersed with the story of Manod's unfolding understanding of Joan and her partner's intentions are excerpts of folktales, ethnographic portraits, Joan's journal notes, and Manod's own notes about her exquisite embroidery, giving readers insights that create a deep empathy for Manod, while the structure reinforces the sense of the scarcity of the island's brutal landscape. O'Connor's precise and spare prose feels at once claustrophobic and full of possibility, while emulating the interior of her yearning protagonist. A notable debut imbued with the pain of buried promise.

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