Whale Fall

A BBC 'Between the Covers' Book Club Pick

'Gorgeous and heartbreaking . . . I wept' - Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep

'I didn't want it to end' - Maggie O'Farrell

An Observer Best Debut of the Year

Shortlisted for the 2025 Betty Trask Award

It is 1938 and on an island off the coast of Wales, Manod is trying to imagine her future. Her choices are stark: she must either stay and look after her father's house, in the wild landscape that drove her mother to madness, or marry and leave. And so, when two English anthropologists arrive on the island, Manod senses the possibility of a thrilling new life. But, as she becomes entangled in their work, and their strange relationship, the outside world she had yearned for appears a much darker place than she could ever have imagined.

Elizabeth O’Connor’s beautiful, devastating debut Whale Fall tells a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world on the edge of great tumult.

'The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change' - Anne Enright

'Powerful . . . written with a calm, luminous precision' - Colm Tóibín