The author has published a book of short stories and telling the story through so many viewpoints, she engages the reader quickly in each chapter and keeps the novel moving. If you’ve enjoyed the quiet, introspective work in the style of Gráinne Murphy, Donal Ryan and Claire Keegan, you will adore Falling Animals. Frank, die dicht bij het lijk kwam maar niets gezien heeft, vertelt over het opruimen van de kadavers van zeehonden op het strand. Het scheepswrak, dat dertig jaar geleden op de zandbank strandde, staat centraal in Er schuilt een vreemde in ons.

I don't think my explanation is helping much to sell the book which is a shame because it is beautiful, poetic, sad, lyrical and utterly absorbing. But she is quick to point out that the back story she created is pure fiction and is in no way related to this man, who was named as Peter Bergmann. This very atmospheric novel is told as a mosaic of multiple points of view, each chapter a short story about a different character's sometimes fleeting connection to the unidentified dead body found on the windswept Irish beach.Sheila Armstrong published her first collection of short stories, How to Gut a Fish, in February 2022 and although Falling Animals is her debut novel, it’s extraordinarily constructed in the form it takes.

A series of beautifully written short stories that capture the magic of nature and the essence of individuality that the author skilfully melds together in a cleverly told seamless whole. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. It's quite a melancholy tale - the sadness of a sick man dying completely alone is what moved me most of all. Sure, these are people no stranger to strangeness washing up on their shores, from strandings to shipwrecks; they’ve seen it all over the years. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. The protagonists include: a man collecting the dead body of a seal; the woman who finds the body; the pathologist that examines it – and later her daughter; an artist suffering with MS and earlier her son – who also saw the man; the bus driver who drove the man to the town; a refugee who takes the man’s backpack where he had discarded it; a Filipino seaman on the skeleton staffed ship which wrecked; the galley cook on the ship – who ends up running the café in the town; the boy who started the fire accidentally – in a panic after seeing an apparent person on the wreck (which he keeps secret); a diver who investigates the wreck for salvage photos and also panics – this time seeing bones (which again he does not mention); a Colombian who now runs the town’s bar – his lover the man who as a boy set the wreck on fire (a secret he keeps until a painting the artist makes uncovers his memories); a woman who claims the dead man is her husband; a Guard (policeman) who is involved with much of this; a priest at an Australian seafearers mission who encounters someone we realise is the man who decides, very ill, to set out for Ireland having seen a picture of the wreck; a man serving on a gunship protecting Icelandic ships in the cod wars.