Falling Animals

On an isolated beach set against a lonely, windswept coastline, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune staring out towards an old shipwreck at the water's edge. All those who see the man in the early morning light notice the same three things: his hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his face. No one knows who the dead man is or how he died, but everyone in the nearby village has their theory - a drunk vagrant who stumbled from the cliff, a sailor who fell from one of the countless vessels that drift by daily or perhaps someone that is linked to the ship wrecked on the beach decades before. Told through a chorus of voices in the village, Falling Animals. follows the crosshatching threads of their lives - true and imagined, real and surreal, past and present - to unravel the story of one nameless man, alone on a beach. Elegiac and atmospheric, dark and disquieting, Sheila Armstrong's debut novel marks her arrival as one of the most uniquely gifted writers at work in literary fiction today.