Elizabeth O'Connor is clearly a clever woman with a great talent for putting words together and I found myself reading this book as though I was watching the people through a lens. It's more of a social observation than a gripping tale but it's interesting to see how island people lived around the start of the second world war and the characters are very believable. The book is told from the perspective of an eighteen year old girl called Manod and it begins at a time when a dying whale washes up on the beach. The whale is too big for anyone to move so the islanders are unable to save it and nature is left to deal with the problem. The time of the whale fall coincides with the arrival of two university people who come to observe the old island customs before they are lost and Manod spends a lot of time with them translating Welsh into English. Old traditions were still observed on the island as most inhabitants had very little interaction with the mainland, so u...