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

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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. Falling Animals is staggeringly beautiful, both inside and out, with a most striking cover, a work of art in its own right.

It's quite a melancholy tale - the sadness of a sick man dying completely alone is what moved me most of all. So enjoyable and undoubtedly gorgeous, the atmosphere and descriptions of the sea would not usually be my thing but Sheila Armstrong paints the storms as both beautiful and dangerous. But by a third of the way in a delicately woven structure appeared and I was caught up in the achingly human lives of Armstrong's characters.

There were not enough common threads in the story for me to be wrapped up in it and it felt a little jarring to meet a new set of main characters every fifteen pages or so. However, the main reason I enjoyed the novel is the expert way in which Armstrong imagines the lives of various villagers, revealing the things that make them happy and the troubles that keep them awake at night. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed, and a faint smile is on his otherwise lifeless face.

The prose is poetic but the narrative doesn’t suffer for it, the mystery is lurking in the background edging you forwards.His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his otherwise lifeless face. Matías looks at the painting and back at his partner—this gentle man who wakes up with terrible bed hair, has a habit of falling asleep in the cinema, who could burn a glass of water, who he is planning to ask to marry him—and he is suddenly a stranger, a pulsing cloud of acidic dread. Importantly a tanker grounded off the coast of the town and was then later burnt out – its hulk still visible at low tide. It spans a year in which the authorities try to trace the identity of a corpse found on an Irish beach one August morning. 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.

The story, told from various perspectives of different residents of a small town on the Irish coast, gives haunting, charming, and humorous insights into this varied cast of characters. He's buried months later after a lengthy investigation - but the impact on the community that found him leaves a mark and it's shaped by the major incident that effects their lives. It’s so beautifully written that you find yourself wanting to highlight every sentence, every perfect turn of phrase. Armstrong’s novel is a mosaic of narratives written from the perspective of villagers, sailors, professionals and witnesses all of whom have some connection with the unidentified man, from the homeless refugee who’s spotted his backpack and made use of it to the Australian priest who thinks he may have met him.Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). Each chapter focuses on a specific person and their life which may only have the most tangential link to the unidentified man and his story.

At its heart it has an unexplained death, a man found at the edge of a beach in a small coastal town in North West Ireland and the quest to find out who he was, but it is so much more than that.They pay dearly for hope, but bodies are money and money is bodies; this has always been the way of it. If you’ve enjoyed the quiet, introspective work in the style of Gráinne Murphy, Donal Ryan and Claire Keegan, you will adore Falling Animals. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. The reason for not giving it 5 stars is that I did find some of the descriptions too long and I wish that some of the peoples' lives were a bit more upbeat and positive.