NYT Book Review Editors' Choice! Elizabeth O'Connor, WHALE FALL

[1:18]Zibby Owens: to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, hosted by me, Zibby Owens. It's an award winning podcast with over 1,900 episodes, all featuring authors of books you love and those you have yet discover. Listen daily five times a week. Then go to zippymedia.com and learn more about what the LA Times called the Zippyverse. Zippy Media includes Zippy's Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica, Zippy Book Publishing, Zivvy Retreats, Zivvy's Book Club, and more. Go check it out at zivvymedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zivvy Owens. It'll take you where you need to go. Thanks for listening. Elizabeth O'Connor is the author of Whale Fall, a novel Elizabeth lives in Birmingham. Her short stories have appeared in the White Review and Granta, and she was the twenty twenty winner of the White Review short story prize. She holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Birmingham, specializing in the modernist writer, HD, and her writing of coastal landscapes. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Whale Fall, a novel. Congratulations.

[2:25]Elizabeth O'Connor: Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here. Well,

[2:30]Zibby Owens: thank you. I feel like you've taken me to a totally different time and place. Like, I've, like, been in a cinema, you know, like, completely immersed, wet even, saltwater and tweed and I don't even know. But, you know, it's an escapist type of read where you can't even believe that there's a culture that lives like this and that they could be so close to real life. You know? Anyway, why don't you do a better job and tell listeners what Whale Fall is about? Yeah, of course. Whale Fall is set on a remote island off the coast of Wales.

[3:04]Elizabeth O'Connor: There are many islands like this off the coast of the British Isles, which I'm sure we'll talk about in this interview. The book is set on this island just before the Second World War in 1938 and it follows a small island family and in particular a young girl in this family, Manod, who is 18, just finished her schooling and sort of wondering what the rest of her life will look like. The island is visited by two anthropologists who come to study the island and what they see as this kind of vanishing way of life. And Manod begins to work for them as a translator. And the book kind of just charts that relationship, how it changes Manod's worldview and how it changes the island and everything that happens in this collision of two worlds.

[3:52]Zibby Owens: Wow. And one of the things that surprised me early on is that nobody on the island knew how to swim, that it was not even that the men and you said something like the men never the men didn't know how and so the women didn't didn't even occur to the women to do it. Right? That that the the ocean just seemed so inaccessible that it wasn't even something that they would consider. It was just some like a beast to be reckoned with. Yeah.

[4:18]Elizabeth O'Connor: And so dangerous, and that kind of really shapes their relationship to the sea, this sense of how dangerous it can be and how changeable. Yes, there's that sense of, well, how would you learn in the first place in a sea that's so unpredictable?

[4:34]Zibby Owens: Why would you? Yes. So you have the storms in the sea and the unpredictable weather and how they navigate sort of the elements, but then you also have all of those things inside of one particular family and how Menat is taking care of her sister who maybe is anyway, has some challenges and her mother, which we read about her sort of demise and then the sad I don't know. The you know? Yeah. I don't know if we can talk about it, but sort of trying to save someone you love and not really understanding, and they didn't have, like, the hospitals the way we do now and all of that. Yeah. It was just like, oh, she's in bed or she's getting thin or where is she? You know? And sort of that black box of misunderstanding, if you will. Yeah.

[5:23]Elizabeth O'Connor: Yeah. That's a great phrase for it, I think. Thanks.

[5:27]Zibby Owens: So tell me about your being drawn to this. I know in the in the author's note at the end, you talk about all the different islands that have these populations, and some have been moved off into other places and some persist. Where did this fascination come from, and how did you and why write this book? Where did this come from? Why are we talking about why are we talking about these island like, what, 30 people on an island in the nineteen forties or whatever?

[5:56]Elizabeth O'Connor: Yeah. So as you say, the main book of the novel came from an interest I had in the islands that orbit the British Isles. So the British Isles, there's lots of sort of smaller islands off our coasts. And many of these had quite turbulent histories at the start of the twentieth century. So I name a few of them in the author s note, which were ones that were particularly inspiring to me. And they were places like Barsley Island in Wales, which really saw quite rapid population decline in the early twentieth century. St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides and the Blasket Islands off the West Coast Of Ireland, which were both formally evacuated because of things like changing weather conditions, ageing populations, and things that were happening on the mainland, sort of modernisation and that kind of thing. And I became really interested in these because it felt like there might be something these communities could tell us about living at a time when we might have these similar anxieties about places becoming unhospitable or unlivable, this feeling of possible migration or evacuation sort of constantly on the horizon, forgive the pun, and that sense of that anxiety and what that means for the way we live and the way we relate to the landscape and to each other. So I think that's really where the novel started.

[7:22]Zibby Owens: And what's your educational background and your fascination and with all of it and your experience with writing and just take me into how this book plays into your life.

[7:33]Elizabeth O'Connor: Oh, so I studied English, English literature. Ended up going through quite a lot of education, so I finished my PhD in 2020. And that was really looking at an American poet called Hilda Doolittle, who was a modernist poet first half of the twentieth century. And I was particularly looking at the way she wrote about landscapes and particularly about coastal landscapes, thinking a lot about how the coast is used as a symbol in poetry, and also looking at these kind of early depictions and early interpretations of what would now be called climate change, things like coastal erosion and the movement of people, displacement of people on the shore. So I had from there, I think that real interest in coasts, I suppose, and that sense of what does it mean to have something as a symbol, but also as a real place and a real ecology, and what are the tensions between those two things. I think the other thing that coasts came from was my family history. So my grandmother and grandfather came from quite isolated coastal places. So I myself am from Birmingham, which if you know the geography of The UK, Birmingham's right in the centre, as far away from any single coast as you could probably get if you're living in The UK. But I always felt that personal connection to it. And then in terms of where writing has been in my life, I would say I started writing I've always written, always read a lot. I think there was that feeling that a lot of writers have where you don't quite understand that it can be a job or a career for someone. Feels almost like this mythical thing and books just kind of appear. But I started writing seriously probably about six or seven years ago. Wherefore was the first novel I've written. And then currently writing the second as well. That's where writing kind of fit into my life. It was partly

[9:36]Zibby Owens: doing my PhD and starting writing there, but it had been quite a long held passion as well. So now it it makes a little more sense the way that not that it didn't make sense, but it it puts into context how you have sort of an outsider's view of the town and, like, the reports. And then you have sort of a more of a academic description, which you intersperse. And then you have, you know, met what's your name? Matic? Matad? Matad. Matad. The things that come out that she's writing. Right? Like, they're the little poems, the little snippets Yes. That she starts writing. And it's almost, you know, historical, you know, historical fiction about a town you know, a time and place. And, anyway, I I get it now, your lens through which you're seeing the world, which is unique and makes fiction really interesting. You know? It makes the it imbued the novel with a lot of, you know, sense and time and place and history and all of that. I mean, even when, you know, the dad is talking about how there used to be another connecting island to their island that no longer even exists and all of that. It's like, how is all of this changing, and how does history get passed down to all of these generations and the stories and all that? Yeah.

[10:50]Elizabeth O'Connor: Yeah. Exactly. And also thinking about how those histories get told and who tells them Those tensions between kind of oral history and written history, I think, hope, sort of in the novel as well. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[13:45]Zibby Owens: You also have Menard sort of like burgeoning sexuality and finding herself through that and the two guys that she sort of takes up with a little bit throughout. It's sort of a little bit of a heartbreak situation. And I just like the image of hers being like, wait, did the boat leave? You know? I mean, that's not how you wrote it. You wrote it beautifully with, you know, lyrically in in your way. But, you know, how do you find love on a on an island with 36 people or something? Right? Like, what do people think?

[14:14]Elizabeth O'Connor: Well, yeah, exactly. And I think, as you say, the book is also a coming of age story. And for Manod, who's only ever known the island, there's nothing kind of exceptional about it. What's exceptional to her is that feeling of what might be beyond the island and what might be in her future. So she's talking to these men who appear in her life and working out what that means for her. She sort of sees the anthropologists quite symbolically, think, as these kind of representations of the Mainland and all that the Mainland can offer her. So it's very much about her and her figuring out what her ambitions are and who she is at that young age. It's almost like Moana.

[15:01]Zibby Owens: Have you seen Moana? I

[15:04]Elizabeth O'Connor: love that. I'll take that.

[15:07]Zibby Owens: Moana too. They just released the preview. It's coming out. So, you know, you can do like a book giveaway. If you love if you love Moana, you will love Whale Fall. Except the adventures don't really happen. Maybe that's part two. Wait, what's the next step? Is that what happens? No, part two is not a sequel, sadly.

[15:28]Elizabeth O'Connor: No sequel in the pipeline. What is the book you're working on now? So at the moment, it kind of keeps changing. I think one of the things about writing the second novel is you go through all of the same challenges and all of the same kind of roadblocks and crossroads that you go through in the first novel. What has carried through is this interest I have in nature, I suppose, and the way we live alongside nature, the way we live alongside animals, and the kind of meanings and symbols that are bound up in them. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about. And then I got really interested in the world of dog shows. A few years ago I wrote some short stories set there and really loved that world. It felt really unusual and that it had a lot to offer with storytelling. So that's kind of what I'm working on at the moment, but it is quite a changeable thing. Have you read Dogland by Tommy Tomlinson? No, it's on my list.

[16:29]Zibby Owens: Yeah, it sounds great. Yeah. He's a great writer. Great journalistic sensibility and all that. Yeah.

[16:37]Elizabeth O'Connor: I'll just keep recommending movies. Best in show. That's good. Best in show, I love. But yeah. That's a good one.

[16:44]Zibby Owens: So what is your writing life and regular life like in the middle of The UK with your mind and history and, you know, all of that? It sounds so sort of romantic and otherworldly thing. Is it, or is it like you're still, like, you know Definitely not. Trying to, you know, order stuff or be on Instagram or whatever? What is that like? Exactly.

[17:08]Elizabeth O'Connor: Yeah. So at the moment, I still have my day job at the moment. So yeah, have that sort of nine to five full time and then sort of writing alongside that either in the mornings or in the evenings. Tell me more about your nine to five job. Oh yeah, sure. So I work at the University of Birmingham, which is a big academic university here in The UK. I work mainly with postgraduates in a graduate school, doing training in how to do research and referencing and that kind of thing. It's a job I really enjoy. I think doing the PhD, I always thought I'd be working at a university afterwards. And it's nice to see whether things intersect with writing. So sometimes you might hear about someone's research project or some book someone's got coming out and it suddenly completely intersects with something that you were thinking about. So it's really nice to be in that kind of network of thinkers and, yeah, researchers. But it is a lot. How are you doing

[18:11]Zibby Owens: book publicity and all that? I mean, it almost feels very unlikely except that it's gotten such a huge pickup in The US. So how that we and I should be talking from so far away, you know, as the book is rolling

[18:24]Elizabeth O'Connor: out. It's amazing. Yeah. It's been really wonderful. Reception in The US has been fantastic. And there's been lots of promotional stuff, which is another thing to balance alongside China, write the second novel and day job. But it's been really unexpected. I mean, writing your first book, you're kind of just alone at your desk. I was sat there thinking, Is anyone going to read this weird little book about Welsh fishermen? Is this something that anyone finds interesting except me? So it's just lovely to have it out in the world and amazing to me that it's sort of across the pond and that there are readers there.

[19:02]Zibby Owens: Well, it is about that, but it's really not just about that. I mean, that's the back drop of a of a story of, you know, being a sister, being a daughter, know, someone longing for their own relationship and independence in a changing world. Right? It's a it's a symbol for the day. So

[19:28]Elizabeth O'Connor: Yeah. Wow. Beautiful. What writers do you admire a lot? So I really love Claire Keegan. I think she's a really big influence on my writing, that sense of really paring things back without losing the depth or emotional depth of what you re writing. And also kind of embracing a bit of ambiguity in your writing and in plot and in narrative, something I find really compelling as a reader and a way that I like to write. Another writer who was a really big influence on me was Rachel Carson, the American nature writer. Obviously is famous for her non fiction, but she wrote some short stories kind of early on in her career, which would be set on the shore and sort of about the creatures that lived there. So about sort of the shellfish and the fish and corals and seaweeds. And it would look to find narrative and story in those interactions and in the kind of interconnections of these different creatures rather than really thinking about human lives and human drama. So in a lot of these stories, humans just appear very briefly. They might be walking past store, put their hands into one of the rock pools, something like that. And that was something I found really interesting, this idea of how can you write about nature without really concentrating on humans, as a human trying to write about nature. So those two, I'd say, were were really big influences.

[21:08]Zibby Owens: Wow. There's another book, and I'm blanking on all the details about it. So this is probably not gonna be I'll have to follow-up on this and put it in show notes or something. But I interviewed another author who specializes in nature and lives in The UK. And her book was similar, but she included more it was more of a memoir, and she included more of her back surgery, which she got on a boat, and she spends a lot of time on boats. Oh my gosh. I feel like the two of you would have a lot to talk about. I think so as well. Yeah. It's not as historical. Right? It's more of what it's like today. It's like a fast forward woman sort of braving. Moana Park, this is like the con the continuation. Oh my gosh. Maybe it'll come to me in the next second. I can picture her. She was wearing, like, a fisherman sweater on our Zoom and oh my gosh. Anyway, it'll come to me. But anyway, you know, this whole, woman facing wild of the water vein. So anyway.

[22:10]Elizabeth O'Connor: Yeah. Interesting. What advice would you have for aspiring authors? I think just to not give up would be my biggest piece of advice. Writing a book is such a challenge and can feel really difficult at times when you don't know where it's going or what's going to happen afterwards. There were a lot of times with Wailfall where I was hovering it over the recycling bin icon on my computer and just thinking, what am I doing? Why don't I just sort of give up on this project that doesn't seem to be working? But obviously I m glad I didn't. And it was that perseverance and feeling of believing in in what you're writing. So that would be my biggest advice, just to really dig deep. Don't give up. Okay. Hannah Stowe,

[22:56]Zibby Owens: Move Like Water, My Story of the Sea. And there's a whale on the cover of her book. Perfect. But it's a memoir. Okay. So you and Anna have to have, like, a conversation or do some event. Talk to your publishers. That sounds I can put you in touch. Move Like Water, My Story of the Sea, the modern day. You know, Menard in the 2024. Anyway, well, congratulations. Congratulations on all of your success. It's truly like work of literature, modern day literature. Thank you. Reading in a class or something like that. Very beautifully written. And I learned a lot. You know, I learned a lot. I feel like I understand a different culture and that I that I literally took a voyage myself. So Oh, that's lovely. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Best of luck. Thanks so much. Day. Okay. Thank you, Sydney. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at Zippy Owens and at Zippy Readers.