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Falling Animals: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick

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Falling animals is almost a collection of short stories with a common theme. But these stories weave together to form a beautiful and complex pattern. The language is gorgeous and poetic, the glimpses we have into the lives of the characters made me want to know more. I found the way that information about the awful conditions experienced by people working at sea, even in modern times, was handled very effectively and was very thought-provoking.

Sheila Armstrong's prose is meticulous and startlingly visual. Falling Animals salvages something altogether human from Life's most sorrowful mysteries." - Rónán Hession I totally appreciated what Sheila was trying to do here, but I really started to lose momentum half way through the book, right through to what I found to be an unsatisfying conclusion.Told through a chorus of voices,Falling Animalsfollows the crosshatching threads of lives both true and imagined, real and surreal, past and present. Slowly, over great time and distance, the story of one man, alone on a beach, begins to unravel. Elegiac and atmospheric, dark and disquieting, Sheila Armstrong’s debut novel marks her arrival as one of the most uniquely gifted writers at work in literary fiction today. [ My Review ] Falling Animals is not a book to be rushed. There are numerous moments that require contemplation and silence, unfathomable moments when you need to just consider the sheer expertise and clarity of Sheila Armstrong’s words. I really cannot even begin to describe the quality of the writing as it haunts, provokes, evokes, and stimulates the mind. The chapters are short and we only get a brief glimpse of most characters, but they are so well crafted, fully rounded people, that I was left wanting some of their individual stories to be fleshed out into full novels. Armstrong's writing captures the struggles and real lives of her characters with a gentle yet powerful touch. A poignant and immersive read, Falling Animals so deftly pitches you into the head of each character you'll lose yourself in this book. Armstrong writes complex and troubling stories with such unflinching graciousness her characters are desperately humane and easy to empathise with. A stunning first novel from one of Ireland's most intriguing new voices." - Jan Carson

Whatever the reason, I began with a few balls – one point of view to introduce the story, a second for the inciting incident, a third, a fourth – and, for a while, everything stayed airborne. I added more balls, and more, faster and faster, until I got up to twenty, twenty-five voices – and it all fell apart. The balls tumbled down and I hit myself in the face more times than I can count. A body on the beach sparks this question in Falling Animals, the debut novel from Sheila Armstrong, an acclaimed Irish writer whose first foray into novels focuses on the humanist approach to connection, communication, and our shared histories, conscious and unconscious.

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A good storm is a storm you sail out of. And they do sail out of it, while Manoy is sleeping, strapped to his bunk again. The next morning, the sea is flat and cool, like a drunk embarrassed by his antics the night before. The disquieting story of an unidentified man as told by those who crossed paths with him on the last day of his life, Sheila Armstrong’s debut novel is haunting, lyrical and darkly suspenseful Armstrong has a very powerful voice, an eye for nuance and image that far exceeds many of her contemporaries, and she puts it to good use here. Each character feels a portrait of someone I know or have known in my own life, and there is such a care and attention paid to the evocation of the world around the characters that they feel even more true to life. Sheila Armstrong is a writer from the northwest of Ireland. Her first collection of short stories, How To Gut A Fish, was published in 2022. Her writing has been listed for the Society of Authors Awards, the Irish Book Awards, the Edge Hill Prize, the Galley Beggar Press Prize and the Kate O’Brien Award. She is an Arts Council Next Generation Artist. Falling Animals is her debut novel.

Interestingly, though Armstrong uses a real life event to inspire her novel, on June 16th, 2009, the body of a man (later identified as Peter Bergmann) was discovered on a beach in Sligo and, to this day, how he ended up there is shrouded in mystery. Het verhaal sluit mooi af, in verbondenheid. Boeiend om te lezen hoe verhalen ontstaan! Wat we écht hebben gezien is soms een andere werkelijkheid dan dat we ervaren. We associëren een voorval met een gebeurtenissen of herinneringen uit ons eigen leven. Eenzelfde gebeurtenis heeft zo op iedereen een andere invloed. Zoveel mensen dragen zoveel verhalen in zich. En toch zijn er raakpunten en verbintenissen. Sheila Armstrong brengt dit zo mooi! Vanaf de eerste zinnen voel je dat dit een verhaal is om langzaam te lezen… en soms stukjes te herlezen. Geniet ervan! Falling Animals is a short and bittersweet delight, and while its focus on the interlacing connections of its community could have had more payoff and catharsis, it’s still a stellar work from a writer coming into her power as a novelist, with one of the most touching endings a curious reader is to read all year, an ending you’re sure to fall for, pun very much intended. Second, make sure it suits your writing style. Maybe you’re excellent at getting close to a character’s thoughts, sitting on their shoulders, seeing through their eyes. If that’s the case, you’d need a convincing reason to move away from that, to change horses midstream. The way I like to write – from a bird’s eye angle, dipping in and flitting away – lends itself to multiple narrators. Writing a book from multiple perspectives means you have to learn to juggle. When I began writing my novel, Falling Animals, I knew from the very beginning that I wanted each chapter to be from a different point of view. I can’t say exactly how I knew, just that it felt like the best way to tell the story. It’s possible that I fell into this form because I had only written short stories before, and sustaining a single vantage point across a whole novel felt too intimidating. On good days, I tell myself it was a conscious creative decision. On dark days, I tell myself it’s because I’m an idiot who bit off about ten banquets more than she could chew.

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Finally, make sure this approach suits what your story is about. This isn’t what happens in your story; rather it is what it means on a deeper level. This sounds extremely nebulous, and I’m trying to convince myself as I write. My novel starts off when a nameless man is found dead on a beach. If I told the story from his point of view, it would be an entirely different kind of book. The man’s life is not what my book is about. I wanted instead to build up a sense of community, of the lives of those around him, of a group of people affected by one event: a chorus of voices. The book is split into many accounts from people who knew of the dead man on the beach. I enjoyed some of their stories more than others. What I would give for a whole novel about Nessa. I could have read about her for hours. Her chapter then leads into the final one; an ending that has me in a chokehold. Utterly unsatisfying and yet, complete and resolute. I really enjoyed Falling Animals, and look forward to reading How to Gut a Fish, this author’s short story collection. her daughter Nessa has begun her final year of secondary school. She is bright, too bright for her own good, according to her teachers, but she is raw and easily bruised, like a half-peeled mango. At seventeen, Nessa is too young and too old, too naïve and too cynical, and Teresa cannot find the words to make her daughter understand how cruel the world can be to bright women. On an isolated beach, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune facing out to sea. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed, and a faint smile is on his otherwise lifeless face. There is an aching sadness, in the car, but it is untethered: the dead man is a stranger to them. But still, they feel a tenderness towards him, as if he were a bird caught in their kitchen curtains. she rolls down the windows to let the breeze in, to let the grief fly out."

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