Book Review: ‘Whale Fall,’ by Elizabeth O’Connor

Not long after the whale’s arrival, human interlopers arrive in the form of Edward and Joan, English researchers making an ethnographic study of the island, who quickly hire Manod as an assistant and translator. Manod is enraptured by their alienness and by the possibilities they represent. She tells Joan that, before meeting her, she had not known women could attend university or choose not to marry. “I would love to study. Like you,” she says.

“I’m saying that you can. You must,” Joan replies casually, without offering any practical advice or consideration of the barriers Manod faces. “You could do anything,” Edward echoes later when Manod says she would like to attend university, willfully ignoring her obvious misconception that he will take her with him when he leaves.

What drops the scales from Manod’s eyes is her growing awareness that the English duo are manipulating and fabricating their depiction of life on the island. Seeing a photo that they have labeled “An island family enjoys a picnic,” Manod observes that “no one in the photo was related. And we never ate outside.” Edward and Joan persuade a fisherman to lunge around in the surf for another staged photo and are indifferent to Manod’s protests that not only is this not how islanders fish but that the setup is dangerous, as it is custom there that no one learns to swim.

Edward is weak and weaselly, but Joan is the true villain of the novel. A disciple of the fascist Oswald Mosley, she projects “true Britishness” onto the islanders and romance onto the treacherous ocean. To her, the islanders’ endurance of grinding hardship is “such a wonderful way to live … in tune with nature.” When the researchers ask to borrow the whimsical, treasured embroideries Manod has made over the years, ostensibly just to photograph them, I wished only that her disillusionment would speed along a little more quickly.

While occasionally Manod can seem a bit too cleareyed — “The island that’s in your head. I don’t think it exists,” she tells Joan — the novel does an exceptional job of getting at the tension between the big picture and the small one. 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.

WHALE FALL | By Elizabeth O’Connor | Pantheon | 224 pp. | $27