It is pre World War II on a small island off the coast of Wales. Two unusual things have occurred: a beached whale dies on the island and two ethnographers arrive to study the people whose family have survived there for centuries. Manod, an eighteen year old girl who lives with her father, a lobster fisherman, and her younger sister, is asked to act as the scientist’s interpreter since most of the inhabitants only speak a form of Welsh.

I did not get into Whale Fall until the ethnographers, Edward and Joan, arrive on the island. Then this novel really took off. This slim work has a lot to say about family, nature, isolation and the unreliability of the social sciences.