Second, make sure it suits your writing style. Maybe you’re excellent at getting close to a character’s thoughts, sitting on their shoulders, seeing through their eyes. If that’s the case, you’d need a convincing reason to move away from that, to change horses midstream. The way I like to write – from a bird’s eye angle, dipping in and flitting away – lends itself to multiple narrators. Finally, make sure this approach suits what your story is about. This isn’t what happens in your story; rather it is what it means on a deeper level. This sounds extremely nebulous, and I’m trying to convince myself as I write. My novel starts off when a nameless man is found dead on a beach. If I told the story from his point of view, it would be an entirely different kind of book. The man’s life is not what my book is about. I wanted instead to build up a sense of community, of the lives of those around him, of a group of people affected by one event: a chorus of voices. Your doctor says that the final name etched on the plaque is not one of us, that he was not lost at sea. That his heart simply decided to lay down its weight. But we claim him as one of our own, because, no matter the cause - a sad, wet end, a violent cut, a quiet slipping away - all our hearts have laid down their weights.’ A man is discovered on a lonely stretch of isolated shore. He appears to be looking serenely out to sea, but he is quite dead. He carries no identification, nobody knows him, he apparently hasn't drowned. A months long investigation turns up nothing about who he was or came from, but the community have taken him into their hearts, claiming him as one of their own.

The book is split into many accounts from people who knew of the dead man on the beach. I enjoyed some of their stories more than others. What I would give for a whole novel about Nessa. I could have read about her for hours. Her chapter then leads into the final one; an ending that has me in a chokehold. Utterly unsatisfying and yet, complete and resolute. I really enjoyed Falling Animals, and look forward to reading How to Gut a Fish, this author’s short story collection.I was so excited for this book that I couldn't resist reading it four months early...!! Can we just take a second to appreciate how gorgeous this book cover is as well?! Stunning. I loved How to Gut a Fish, and I love [Falling Animals] too. Armstrong's curiosity in the 'small' moments of people's lives is immersive and hypnotic. I found the novel to be tender and dark, alive with the sense that all destinies are intertwined. She is such a fabulous writer." - Megan Bradbury

Sheila Armstrong is a writer from the northwest of Ireland. Her first collection of short stories, How To Gut A Fish, was published in 2022. Her writing has been listed for the Society of Authors Awards, the Irish Book Awards, the Edge Hill Prize, the Galley Beggar Press Prize and the Kate O’Brien Award. She is an Arts Council Next Generation Artist. Falling Animals is her debut novel. Hij zit rechtop tegen een zandduin, met zijn handen gevouwen en de blote voeten over elkaar geslagen, volkomen sereen, en ze verbaast zich erover dat de zee hem zo netjes heeft uitgespuugd.” Armstrong has a very powerful voice, an eye for nuance and image that far exceeds many of her contemporaries, and she puts it to good use here. Each character feels a portrait of someone I know or have known in my own life, and there is such a care and attention paid to the evocation of the world around the characters that they feel even more true to life. Falling Animals is staggeringly beautiful, both inside and out, with a most striking cover, a work of art in its own right. It is a novel of rare artistry and elegance, a really unique and sublime experience, one not to be missed! Whatever the reason, I began with a few balls – one point of view to introduce the story, a second for the inciting incident, a third, a fourth – and, for a while, everything stayed airborne. I added more balls, and more, faster and faster, until I got up to twenty, twenty-five voices – and it all fell apart. The balls tumbled down and I hit myself in the face more times than I can count.Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide. The novel is told in a series of short third party point of view chapters (with a Greek chorus of other sea victims in the final chapter). 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. A body on the beach sparks this question in Falling Animals, the debut novel from Sheila Armstrong, an acclaimed Irish writer whose first foray into novels focuses on the humanist approach to connection, communication, and our shared histories, conscious and unconscious. I totally appreciated what Sheila was trying to do here, but I really started to lose momentum half way through the book, right through to what I found to be an unsatisfying conclusion. Falling Animals is not a book to be rushed. 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. I really cannot even begin to describe the quality of the writing as it haunts, provokes, evokes, and stimulates the mind.