Sign'S of Life

It is impossible to do justice in this space to the rich spiritual-thematic explorations which Morley produces from this extended visit... from these and many more images and experiences emerges a poignant kind of personal spirituality which leads David to a new understanding of his own humanity. The writing, too, is superb... There is beauty in strange places in Morley's haunting scheme. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH hard to resist at least a tingle of awe when a 100-ton whale surfaces so near the village that the warm spume of its blow drifts up on to land in droplets that can be felt by the people on the shore. -- ADAM MARS JONES OBSERVER Morley writes intensely beautiful prose, compelling in short bursts, and delivers a haunting elegy for an already vanished culture that will more than reward. DAILY MAIL ...as much a travel book as a novel. Morley's evocation of place is passionate and absorbing - the exotic locations are realised as vividly as the characters - and the story has a heady tang of ancient myth and old-fashioned adventure. -- KATE SAUNDERS THE TIMES the descriptions of hunting the whale are eerily gripping, and the book really takes off in these sections. And engrossing... read, Journey to the End of the Whale passes the time amiably. IRISH EXAMINER there is true beauty here too, in passages which are dream-like and philosophical by turns... The Melvillean climax comes when the long dearth of prey is dramatically reversed by a sperm whale breaching close to shore. To anyone lucky enough to have witnessed this spectacle - one of nature's most grandiloquent and theatrical acts - Morley's cool, spare words are vividly evocative... So, too, this fine novel stands in the sun, caught in its own momentary promise of cetacean freedom. -- Philip Hoare INDEPENDENT I could have happily have read a whole novel about these two lives crumbling under the pointiliste minutiae of ordinary tragedy. GUARDIAN the elaborate metaphor of the whale is a success and there is much sophisticated socioeconomic detail about Lefo and its way of life. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Morley's fine novel is not primarily a story of derring-do. On the contrary, it is an elaborate and skilfully constructed pilgrimage... to the depths of the ocean, where whales communicate over vast distances and traverse a huge three-dimensional world. SUNDAY TIMES