Robert J Flaherty’s 1934 film Man of Aran, shot off the west coast of Ireland, is celebrated as a masterpiece of “living cinema” for its depiction of the hardships of remote island life. It is visually stunning but untrustworthy. It was later revealed that Flaherty had asked islanders — who could not swim — to perform invented fishing traditions in the sea.
Elizabeth O’Connor reimagines this awkward request in her richly atmospheric debut novel, Whale Fall, about two Oxford-educated anthropologists who in 1938 arrive on a rugged island off the coast of Wales to research a book about a vanishing way of life. One of the researchers, Joan, asks a fisherman to wade into the choppy waters to stage an action shot, while
