Funnily enough, this book was similar to my two previous book group reads, The Colony and The Whalebone Theatre. Like The Colony, it is set on a small island that clings on to old ways and old language (in this case, Welsh, whereas the language in The Colony was Irish) and like The Whalebone Theatre, the plot loosely revolves around the decaying corpse of a beached whale on the edge of the community.
Like in The Colony, a young islander, Monod,’s head is turned by the arrival of sophisticated English visitors, who come to make a book/documentary about their image of island life, often manipulating the truth to fit their narrative. They use Manod, and let her believe they will help her in return, but like the metaphor of the decomposing whale, they just take what they can exploit and sell and leave the rest to rot.
I liked it well enough – not as much as The Colony, but more than The Whalebone Theatre!
Sarah Wray Writer 