Falling Animals: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick

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But still, they feel a tenderness towards him, as if he were a bird caught in their kitchen curtains. 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. The story delves into its history and the enigma of the dead man, peeling back the lives of everybody involved. Toch verliest het boek uiteindelijk een beetje de focus op het achterliggende verhaal van de overleden man. The effect is some what like a combination of Reservoir 13 and Reservoir Tapes – although without the nature descriptions and seasonal patterns of the former – also while the reason for the disappearance become deliberately close to incidental in McGregor’s work (which focuses instead on the echoes it leaves behind) in this book the protagonists are much more closely involved and the identity of the man and the reason for him coming to die on the coast are (just about) made clear by the end.

The next morning, the sea is flat and cool, like a drunk embarrassed by his antics the night before. He was buried in an unmarked grave with only 6 people present at his funeral and his identity remains unknown still. There are numerous moments that require contemplation and silence, unfathomable moments when you need to just consider the sheer expertise and clarity of Sheila Armstrong’s words. There were no signs of foul play or drowning, but a post-mortem revealed that he had an advanced stage of cancer.

Initially the chapters seemed only vaguely connected, and despite the poetic and immaculately honed prose I wasn't hooked. Some of us leapt overboard, iron shackles around our ankles, rather than become slaves to heartless men. each chapter felt like a perfectly crafted short story - I loved every one - but the final chapter was unsatisfying to me.

Human life is about connection; sometimes, these are barely perceptible; other times, they leave an indelible mark on all involved. This is a book that is very different to what I was expecting, and wildly different to anything I have read before. 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. In the days previous, he had stayed at a hotel where he checked in under the name Peter Bergmann and gave an address in Vienna, both of which proved to be false. 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.I would have preferred some sort of rounding out at the end, but it finished as it began with many unknowns. In Falling Animals, Sheila Armstrong imagines a fictional account of this man’s story, told from the points of view of the villagers who came into contact with him in his final days. Her voice sings, using perfect sentences to create unforgettable characters and landscapes, with a structure so deft it is breath taking. This very atmospheric novel is told as a mosaic of multiple points of view, each chapter a short story about a different character's sometimes fleeting connection to the unidentified dead body found on the windswept Irish beach. At seventeen, Nessa is too young and too old, too naïve and too cynical, and Teresa cannot find the words to make her daughter understand how cruel the world can be to bright women.