Elizabeth O'Connor lives in Birmingham. Her short stories have appeared in The White Review and Granta, and she was the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize in 2020. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Birmingham, on the modernist writer H.D. and her writing of coastal landscapes.
An astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O’Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod: I loved seeing the world through her eyes, and I didn’t want it to end -- Maggie O'Farrell, author of <i>Hamnet</i> and <i>The Marriage Portrait</i> An exquisite, evocative coming-of-age story that takes place in a world on the cusp of great change * The Observer, Debuts of the Year 2024 * A powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiselled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy -- Colm Tóibín, author of <i>The Magician</i> and <i>Brooklyn</i> 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, Booker Prize winning author of <i>The Wren, the Wren</i> I absolutely adored Whale Fall, I fell completely under its spell. Every sentence rang with clarity and authenticity. It's a triumph -- Elizabeth Macneal, bestselling author of <i>The Doll Factory</i> Mesmerising. A novel with such presence, both wild and still: utterly exquisite -- Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of <i>The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock</i> Whale Fall moves like a tide, ebbing and flowing . . . transporting and utterly beautiful -- Seán Hewitt, author of <i>All Down Darkness Wide</i> I devoured the exquisite Whale Fall. Immersive, elegiac and silvered with salt - beautiful -- Lizzie Pook, author of <i>Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge</i> An evocative, slow-burn tale * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice *