The stunning cover on Falling Animals will surely have readers picking this up off the shelves, but dive into this story, and you'll not be disappointed.

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.

The local gardaí investigate but without success. There’s no apparent foul play. There’s no one come forward to identify the man. But the mystery of his life and death lingers long after he’s buried in an unmarked grave, drawing the nearby villagers into its wake.

Sure, these are people no stranger to strangeness washing up on their shores, from strandings to shipwrecks; they’ve seen it all over the years.

Falling Animals is Armstrong’s exceptional debut novel. The story is less concerned with the dead man than the other character’s lives. It is far from your typical mystery or crime 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.

Each chapter is from a different character's viewpoint, and just as their lives intersect, crossing back and forth with a staggering attention to detail, we learn more of our mystery man. Human life is about connection; sometimes, these are barely perceptible; other times, they leave an indelible mark on all involved.

Armstrong doesn't just weave a story well; she gets right under the skin of our characters, drawing out their personality traits with such vitality that they feel known to us almost personally. That we, too, are part of this little community.

I could quickly inhale this gem in one sitting, but it's one not to rush; take your time and savour the haunting, evocative, pitch perfect prose and dialect. Every word counts in this relatively short read, with such attention to detail shown.

If you’ve enjoyed the quiet, introspective work in the style of Gráinne Murphy, Donal Ryan and Claire Keegan, you will adore Falling Animals. Don’t miss out! 5⭐

Many thanks to the publisher for an advance copy via NetGalley; as always, this is an honest review.

A book that stands out from the crowd. The characters and the setting are written exceptionally well.

A body of an unidentified man is found on an isolated beach. The stranger is found peacefully sitting against the sand dune, and nobody knows who he is or how he died…

Falling Animals is a brilliant debut novel by Sheila Armstrong. Written in lyrical prose and using multiple distinct voices, it follows the lives of those who came in, however brief contact with the mysterious man. While they analyse the moment they crossed paths with him, they also reminisce about their lives, past and present. This makes a rather slow but beautiful read.

All of life is present in Sheila Armstrong’s Sligo of Falling Animals. Armstrong, the author of the acclaimed short story collection How to Gut a Fish, manages here in her debut novel to take what makes her stories so memorable and transpose it masterfully to the novel form.

The eerie, earthy, fleeting yet haunting moments of How to Gut a Fish are somehow sustained over a whole, far reaching novel, and Armstrong’s precise attention to detail amounts to a 226 page work in which every word counts. The seeds sewn in the first chapter—mystery, wonder and dread—bury deep into the landscape of the book and unfurl and burst to life so many different times with each new, fully realised character we meet.

The world is terrifying and cruel, but it is also breathtakingly beautiful and sometimes by some strange coincidence or divine intervention people find their way home, their way back to each other, and their way to redemption.

The structure of Falling Animals has shades of Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart, in which a chorus of voices tells the story of how a terrible incident unfolds in a small town. Armstrong’s novel reads even more so like a group of short stories, each chapter is from the point of view of someone from, living in or visiting Sligo, focused around the real life story of the body of a dead man being found on a beach there, who’s identity was never found, and who still remains a mystery.

However, Armstrong’s work is more literary and imaginative rather than true crime or a straightforward fictionalising of events. She gives new life to the story that caught the attention of so many people, and uses it as a jumping off point for this work of fiction.

Armstrong’s style of writing is precise and skilful, and also at times simply beautiful, pairing a plot so clever and intricate with a novel that is just a pleasure to read, sentence by sentence as well as page by page. In fact, I read most of this book in two sittings, and couldn’t help myself but started rereading it just two months later.

If you pull at the threads of any of Armstrong’s characters they open up a whole world, and we get such a short amount of time with them considering the richness and vitality they have on the page.

It should be the case that there are far too many characters to keep track of, but as they begin to weave in and out of each others’ lives and in and out of the narrative around the man found on the beach, they become more and more familiar, and some in particular are standouts.
The young, lost, Mitchell, the Lila, the spiky survivor, and especially my own favourite character Matías, whose story of a wandering Columbian man who finds himself running a traditional pub in the West of Ireland could have been an entire novel in its own right.

Each character is rendered richly and respectfully; no matter how young or old, or where they come from, they each have an important part to play and story to tell, and each are equally worthy of our time and attention.
The young, lost, Mitchell, the Lila, the spiky survivor, and especially my own favourite character Matías, whose story of a wandering Columbian man who finds himself running a traditional pub in the West of Ireland could have been an entire novel in its own right.

Each character is rendered richly and respectfully; no matter how young or old, or where they come from, they each have an important part to play and story to tell, and each are equally worthy of our time and attention.

In this novel, the world is a parish. That is not to say that it is ‘small’ in the sense of it being small-minded, but what is so striking about it is how the power of family, place and home seems to pull people back to this one town, wherever they come from or go to. The different types of people, from all different walks of life make it seem like all of life is contained there.

On the other hand, the novel is far reaching, while never losing sight of the local, the specific, and the home. Armstrong opens the novel suddenly, vividly, with a dead seal on the beach (foreshadowing the dead man) and writes that “the horizon curves… all the way around the world and back”.

The satisfying conclusion of the book – though completely unexpected to me when I began reading – brings this feeling full circle. No matter where you go, there you are: on the beach, on your own, but always reaching out to touch the lives of someone else. This world is a terrifying one, to be sure, but it is not a terrifying novel: it is human, and hopeful, and beautiful, too.
I’ve now read the novel twice, and I still think that I could read it a third time and find something new to talk about – how the bodies in this novel carry the weight and the trauma of hard lives lived, and of a hard world; how the decay of those bodies could speak to concerns about global warming; or delving into the detail of each character, who each in their own right could be the main character of the novel, given how rich each chapter is.

It is a book that rewards close attention, and I hope that those who might be interested in studying it will find it. However, it is also a compelling, engrossing read that will grab its readers with two hands, and leave them back where they started, but not quite the same as they once were.

A collection of stories rather than a novel mainly set in an Irish coastal village. The author has an individual, precise and lyrical.style and I would recommend this book to those readers who want something a little different.

Thought this sounded really interesting but I just couldn't engage with the writing style, found it a bit too lyrical and lacking in substance for my liking.

What a beauty of a book. Kudos to the publisher’s design team for the best book cover I’ve ever seen, and a great choice for a novel that’s ultimately a love letter to the sea.

Armstrong has a wonderful way with words; the final chapter in particular is so beautiful I read it twice. I liked her approach of focusing each chapter on a different character, each loosely or closely linked to the shipwreck that faces a small Irish town and the man mysteriously found dead one morning on the beach.

It’s a slow, meditative pace - maybe at times a little bit too slow for my liking, but thoroughly enjoyable. The novel is more about the multitudes of stories that people contain rather than the dead man mystery, and the way the chapters are set makes it easy to read a couple at a time.

Very grateful to Netgalley for the ARC I couldn’t wait to dive into (sea pun unintended!). I look forward to reading Armstrong’s previous (and hopefully future!) book.

A choral story that talks about a man, the people who met him and his death. There's a lot of small stories and a lot of characters.
The author is talented storyteller and did an excellent job in keeping the attention alive and never mixing names and stories.
A lyrical style of writing, an excellent debut.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Armstrong's writing is both lyrical and thought-provoking, and her characters are vividly drawn and full of nuance. The stories in "Falling Animals" are at once poignant, witty, and deeply moving, and they showcase Armstrong's skill as a storyteller.

Overall, "Falling Animals" is a compelling and insightful collection of short stories that will resonate with readers who enjoy beautifully written, character-driven fiction.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I will buy this book to finish later, as I did not manage to finish this in time - but it is in line with my interests and I will consider connecting with the author regarding an interview on craft.

A stunning cover leads you to a book filled with beautiful words and phrases that linger, just like the ship on the cover. The story revolves around a single man, a man who took himself onto the dunes, sat down and apparently just died. And that is all we really know about him. What follows are little vignettes - each one about someone who passed this man, who saw him, who knew him, who was a witness to his life or his death. On the same coast many years before a ship beached and has just been left to decay and some of the vignettes are about someone who may have had a connection to the ship. These stories take us across Ireland to Iceland and even Australia and as we glimpse the threads that connect them, we glimpse something, maybe, of the man that no one claims as their own. You follow the mystery of this man as, like the villagers who eventually claim him, you want to know who he is and what happened to him and what his story is. How he is connected to all those you read about. The language is stunning and the images that she creates in your mind as you read are clear and vivid. I can't wait to see what she does next.

Such a fascinating debut novel work of fiction. Literary, lyrical prose gives a sense of wonder; drawing from a real case lending an air of authority to it.

The book opens with an isolated beach where a character, nameless, washes up from the sea. 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. Sheila Armstrong makes this case feel particularly authentic, switching gears after a short story collection for a melancholic, sombre tale that just left me awed at some of the word choices here - Armstrong has such a mastery of the turning of the phase it's hard not to be wowed. We get to see these characters and their hopes, dreams and desires told on the page in a way that makes them perfectly human. Nuance might just be key to making the whole thing work and <i>Falling Animals</i> has that in spades.

I love the collection of vignettes that Armstrong has chosen; the ability to use these individual characters and their personal stories paints a bigger picture scale of the attitude and community of the small Irish town that they live in - from the trippy cover it's unique in its design and feel, almost haunting from start to finish. Completely evocative and a highlight of 2023.

Falling Animals
by Sheila Armstrong

This is one of those books that will attract as many readers by it's cover as by it's premise. The colours, the texture of the sea, the salt rusted boat. If your eye is drawn, this story is definitely for you. The North West coast of Ireland is a wild and rugged place. It's people are inextricably linked to the sea, which in turn links them to everyone and everything that is touched by the sea.

A man is discovered on a lonely stretch of isolated shore. He appears to be looking serenely out to sea, but he is quite dead. He carries no identification, nobody knows him, he apparently hasn't drowned. A months long investigation turns up nothing about who he was or came from, but the community have taken him into their hearts, claiming him as one of their own.

This haunting novel is told through a series of vignettes, each one told through the perspective of a person who has reason to feel a connection to this man, either his backstory, or his passing contrail through their life. It brings us from Ireland and Scotland to Iceland and the South West of Australia, with characters young and old, each with their very real thoughts and feelings. The writing is rich and poetic, achingly evocative of the raw and elemental nature of the windswept and briny Sligo shores. Through their connections we come to understand the layers on which a community is built, and how far reaching that connectedness is, in terms of miles, but also of time, how life is some circumstances can be valued so much, and in others is worthless.

A riveting debut novel from a young Sligo woman with a promising creative talent.

Publication date: 25th May 2023
Thanks to #netgalley and #bloomsburypublishing for the ARC

The novel starts with a dead man being found on the beach of a small Irish village.
It’s intriguing as he doesn’t appear to have been murdered, drowned, or any of the things you’d assume.
It then widens into a series of characters who are connected to him either tenuously or more closely, but still his identity is not known.
His identity actually becomes less important as the novel goes on - he represents something as much ax being a corporeal being - a sort of cypher for others’ stories.
Each of the different voices and stories is beautifully written. I was particularly struck by Lila the cook at a local cafe who is haunted by her grief.
The writing is so lyrical and beautiful and it touches on the big themes: who we are, how we connect and what we lose as we go through our lives, yet the stories are small, domestic and intimate.
I would thoroughly recommend this novel. It’s beautifully written and absorbing - a rare combination.

Falling Animals is a novel that reads as a finely woven series of linked stories, a chorus of voices each adding a piece of the puzzle in the mystery of an unidentified dead man who appears on the beach of a seaside town; each character in some way linked to this man, some fleetingly, some more connected; some during his life, and some since the serenely posed body appeared, sitting up and facing out to sea.

I loved Armstrong’s debut short story collection How to Gut a Fish, where often getting to the end of the story seemed less urgent than becoming completely lost in the lyrical quality of each sentence and acutely observed moment, and the same could be said here in her debut novel. Each chapter, named after the particular role the character in question plays in the overall flow of the story, offers us a little window into what is overall a broad and diverse cast of characters, each looking inwards to their own troubles, while also looking outward at the community and world around them. The voices begin in the small coastal village where the body shows up before soaring further afield, making this a rich tapestry brimming with love and grief, struggles and small victories, dreams and hardships; turning a story that begins as something microcosmic into something sweeping. While this means the novel reaches far, it does return; like a net being cast out to sea, pulled back in the hopes of revealing answers.

Armstrong’s writing is haunting and evocative, with a particular knack for nature writing that brings nature to life in striking ways, while the different perspectives consider how, everyday, lives weave in and out of each other; sometimes only momentarily and in barely perceptible ways, sometimes leaving an indelible mark.

Beautiful writing, and a book to get lost in.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

This novel is loosely based on a real-life case that happened in Sligo, Ireland back in 2009. The body of a man was found on a beach and despite an extensive police investigation, he was never identified. There were no signs of foul play or drowning, but a post-mortem revealed that he had an advanced stage of cancer. In this tale, Sheila Armstrong imagines all of the people that were linked to the discovery, from the elderly woman who found him, the bus driver that drove him to Sligo and the homeless man who ended up with his backpack. This is not the first time something unusual has washed up on shore. There is also the matter of a recent shipwreck, a local curiosity that no owner has ever claimed. The story delves into its history and the enigma of the dead man, peeling back the lives of everybody involved.

This is Sheila Armstrong's first novel after the widely acclaimed short story collection, How To Gut A Fish. It's quite a melancholy tale - the sadness of a sick man dying completely alone is what moved me most of all. And the mystery of his passing certainly kept me in suspense. 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. The story is written in such a lyrical, perceptive way that had me highlighting multiple lines on my Kindle edition. It's a haunting, intricately spun novel that marks this author out as a serious talent.

Favourite Quotes:
"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."

"She is proud of him, fiercely, maddeningly proud; her love throbs beside him at night and he feels the heat of it every morning, even after all these years."

"She had fallen in love with this small place, where the sunsets smear themselves across the sky and drown themselves in the temperamental sea, where the clouds skate across her windows like a stopmotion film."

"People live in each other’s shadow; we must shelter each other rather than live alone and suffer in pride."

Falling Animals is a book which at first appears to be set firmly in the physical location in which it begins, a coastal Irish town, quiet in winter, thronging with tourists in summer. As the narrative develops, the story reaches out across the world, piecing together the life of the nameless man found sitting on the beach and the lives of those he came into contact with. It's beautifully written and gently catches the reader with its meditative prose and deep humanity. I loved this book and will be recommending it to anyone who will listen!

A beautiful read. 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. Though all of the threads tie back to the unknown man found dead on the beach which opens the story, the chapters are personal vignettes with glimpses into characters past lives, desires, and dreams rather. Quirky, creative, and gorgeously written.

This was such a beautiful book! I loved how Armstrong explores the tension and history of the village through its various inhabitants, with the mystery on the background. Her writing is beautiful and impeccable too!

An unusual and poetic story surrounding the discovery of an unidentifiable body on the beach of an Irish village. This is the first book I've read by Sheila Armstrong and I will definitely be picking up her short story collection. The threads of the story are sometimes hard to get into as they do meander through people's backgrounds and past events before tying into the main plot, but overall a great literary debut.