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Whale Fall: A Novel
By Elizabeth O'Connor. 2024
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
Animal stories, Serious and literary fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK • A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and…
the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one&’s community&“Both blunt and exquisite . . . O&’Connor&’s excellent debut . . . is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character&’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude.&”—Maggie Shipstead, New York Times Book Review"Whale Fall is a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiseled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy." —Colm Toibin, New York Times bestselling author of Long IslandIn 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person's ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O'Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.
Headshot: A Novel
By Rita Bullwinkel. 2024
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
General fiction, Serious and literary fiction, Sports fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZEONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE READS OF SUMMER…
2024Named a Best Book of 2024 by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Time, Elle, Vulture, Lit Hub, and The Guardian&“Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice.&” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book ReviewAn electrifying debut novel from an &“unusually gifted writer&” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competitionAn unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family&’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors&’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivate young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.