Recent Reading: Whale Fall

This is a short quiet novel about a young girl coming of age on a remote island off the coast of Wales in 1938. Only a few families live on the island, and, other than a whale carcass washing up on shore and a couple of ethnographers visiting and doing some interviews, there is not a lot of plot. The two events that do happen are Monad's (the main character) moving from girl to woman and the looming war with the Nazis, and even these events are oblique.

O'Connor's writing is not flashy, most of the sentences are not long, and there are not a lot of metaphors. I spent quite a bit of time asking myself why I liked this book so much. I never did come up with an answer. But I am glad I read Whale Fall.

I usually look for long books when I hope to achieve a sublime reading experience. But I have enjoyed many short novels. They include, in no particular order,: Stephen King's Elevation, Han Kang's The Vegetarian, Jenny Offill's Dept of Speculation, Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream (truly odd and ethereal), Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station, Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, Sara Levine's Treasure Island!!!, Nicholson Baker's The Mezanine, Toni Morrison's Sula, Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Stephen Graham Jones' Mapping the Interior.

What about you, do you have a favorite short novel?