Though the Bodies Fall
**Shortlisted for the 2023 James Tait Black Fiction Prize**
**Shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards**
**Featured in ‘Irish Debut Authors to Look Out For in 2023’ profile in The Irish Times**
**Featured in Electric Literature’s ‘Most Anticipated Irish Novels of 2023’**
Micheál Burns lives alone in his family’s bungalow at the end of Kerry Head in Ireland. It is a picturesque place, but the cliffs have a darker side to them: for generations they have been a suicide black spot. Micheál’s mother saw the saving of these lost souls – these visitors – as her spiritual duty, and now, in the wreckage of his life, Micheál finds himself continuing her work. When his sisters tell him that they want to sell the land, he must choose between his siblings and the visitors, a future or a past.
Praise for Though the Bodies Fall
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"I opened it up one evening and was instantly captivated ... The atmosphere is haunting; the imagery so powerful that it gave me strange dreams. This novel is a little bit uncanny and a little bit archaic but also incredibly contemporary and prescient ... I loved it."
Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither and Seven Steeples
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"Noel O'Regan writes beautifully. Though the Bodies Fall is a beautiful book."
Audrey Magee, author of The Colony and The Undertaking
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"Though the Bodies Fall is an arrestingly original evocation of the ancestral fault-lines running through this island, a place where landscape is a character, the dead are as real as the living, and the young have a battle on their hands. O'Regan writes with compassion, humour and imaginative force, signalling the arrival of a major new voice in Irish writing."
Claire Kilroy, author of Tenderwire and Soldier Sailor
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"Touching and insightful, O'Regan has penned a tender debut novel about one man's struggle to save the many broken souls, including his own, on Kerry Head."
Anne Griffin, author of When All is Said and The Island of Longing
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"An absorbing and tender novel written in nuanced, luminous prose. A stunning debut from a talented new voice in Irish fiction."
Danielle McLaughlin, author of Dinosaurs on Other Planets and The Art of Falling
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"I was immediately drawn into O'Regan's delicately wrought debut by the tenderness he has for his characters, and by the quiet power that builds beneath the surface of his storytelling."
Carys Davies, author of West and The Mission House
About
Born in Tralee, County Kerry, on the south-west coast of Ireland, Noel is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Seán Dunne Young Writer Award and an Arts Council Next Generation Artist Award.
His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The Stinging Fly, Granta, Ambit, Banshee and The London Magazine.
His debut novel, Though the Bodies Fall, is published by Granta Books.
Get in touch
For official enquiries please contact Euan Thorneycroft at A.M. Heath.
To get in touch with me directly, please fill out the form on the right.