Book Review: Falling Animals a gorgeous weaving of people and the seascape that shapes their lives

There are thousands of sunken ships off the coast of Ireland. Each with its own history. Falling Animals is inspired by the story of two wrecks in the shallow waters off the coast of Sligo, where debut novelist Sheila Armstrong grew up. She recently wrote that her home was so close to the sea she felt she could sail into the air from her back garden swing and land in the water. A ship’s carcass was her view. The Donegal and another vessel in Sligo harbour, the Anichka, that went on fire, both had stranger than fiction histories shaped by trade wars and globalisation. In Falling Animals they are reimaged into one rotting wreck off a fictional northwest village.