This seems like a very gentle story about a young girl who lives on an island off Ireland, but be careful. 

Whale Fall
by Elizabeth O’Connor 
Read by Gwyneth Keyworth 3h 50m
May 1, 2024
Rating 10 / literary fiction 
(I should have read this along with the listen, just for the beauty.)  

Over the past few yeas I’ve developed an enjoyment for Irish stories and novellas. I’ve loved the novels forever,  Ulysses (Joyce, of course), but Milkman, by Anna Burns, too, for sure.  

This one is based on generally true idea – most of the islands off Wales have come on hard time and lost population over the past generations.  The story O’Connor tells is true to heart if not to dialogue.  The story of Whale Fall, later in the narrative, is especially touching. 

“Both blunt and exquisite . . . O’Connor’s excellent debut . . .  is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude.”—New York Times Book Review