Whale Fall
In 1938, as Europe appears to be on the brink of another war, a beached whale is washed up on a fictional, nameless island off the Welsh coast. We see the effect of its stranding on the small, isolated community through the eyes of Manod, the motherless daughter of a fisherman. Interspersed with her jottings are the notes and journals of Joan and Edward, two English anthropologists whose interest is aroused by reports of the beached whale and who come to stay on the island to record its folklore.
Trapped as Manod is between an uncaring father who is as likely to address her by his dog’s name as by her own, and a younger sister who insists on speaking only Welsh, refusing to learn English, she eagerly agrees to assist Joan and Edward in their research, providing them with invaluable insights into the island way of life. But do they perceive her and the islanders as they are, or as they would like them to be? They have their own agenda; to them, the unwitting girl is as much research subject as assistant.
Manod’s narrative unfolds in a series of dreamy musings; it is not clear whether she wrote them as these events unfolded in 1938 or afterwards, as she looks back on that period in her life. Her language is deceptively simple; her limpid descriptions of the island and the bleak life of the islanders also unveil her own unspoken, undefined longings for a different, richer world. Each new entry, short or long and whether from Manod, Joan or Edward, merits a new page, and the resulting blank spaces are quite disorienting for the reader, adding to the feeling of isolation and otherness. A beautifully written if desolate coming-of-age story.
