Elizabeth O’Connor Books In Order

Publication Order of ElizabethO'Connor Standalone Novels

Elizabeth O’Connor is a published author.

She resides in Birmingham. She has written short stories and they have been featured in places such as Granta and The White Review.

O’Connor was the recipient of The White Review Short Story Prize in 2020. She earned her Ph.D. in the area of English literature from the University of Birmingham, on the modernist writer H.D. as well as her writing on coastal landscapes.

Her first fictional novel to come out is titled Whale Fall. It was published by Picador in 2024 in the United Kingdom as well as Pantheon in the United States. It was released in other territories as well and was selected as one of the ten top debut novels of the year by the Observer.

Whale Fall is the debut fictional book to come out from Elizabeth O’Connor. Check out this strong debut from an award-winning author and the novel that was selected as a notable book in the New York Times Book Review!

This is the story that people like Maggie Shipstead in the New York Times Book Review are calling ‘blunt and exquisite’. Colm Toibin of the New York Times and the author of Long Island called the book ‘a powerful novel’.

Elizabeth O’Connor’s story touches on a variety of emotions and deals with isolation, loss, folklore, and finding oneself by taking to life and exploring outside of one’s known community.

A whale has washed up dead on the shores of a Welsh island located somewhere remotely in 1938. Manod has spent the entirety of her life living on the island and for her personally, the dead whale washing up seems like it is a warning of impending doom as well as symbolic of what other things may lie in wait beyond the shores of the island.

Manod is a young woman at the time, living with her sister and her father. She has served as a type of mother figure to her sister ever since their mother passed away years ago. She enjoys her home and her life there, but she also cannot deny that she is becoming aware of an increasing desire to see what life is like beyond the islands that are beautiful but harsh that her family has resided in for generations.

When two English ethnographers arrive who wants to study the culture of the island, it seems like it is a great gift. It is both allowing her to look at life that exists outside of the community and it is also a way for her to escape.

The more time that the ethnographers stay there the more that Manod feels that she is being pulled towards them. She is feeling an awakening going on inside, despite all of her feelings about the fact that she thinks the community is being overly ‘exoticized’ and misconstrued in the process.

This is a stunning debut where O’Connor vividly portrays a community as well as a young woman on the edge who is contending with the outside world and an external force that appears to be closing in on them all.

It is also the story of what can happen when the ambitions of one person ends up threatening the fabric of a community as well as what ends up happening when they come to fruition. Find out what happens in full detail by picking up a copy of Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall!