The Whale Tattoo

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These timeline jumps and disjointed narration did require some adjustment, and for me, hovered around the line between reader absorption and confusion, usually ending on the right side. As time goes on and we learn more about them, the characters gain more complexity giving the story a rich texture. Ransom has written a hypnotic and even more mysterious second novel…This is a lust-drenched, ache-filled gay love triangle of sorts that gnarls into a sly emotional thriller. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The liquidity of the prose, the references to water, and the impact of such water in the plot, create an almost dreamlike state so that it is difficult to know what Joe is remembering accurately, what he has devised for his own purposes and what is a manifestation of his considerable grief.

The first thing readers are bound to take note of regarding Jon Ransom’s debut novel, THE WHALE TATTOO (2022; 231 pp. It left me feeling frustrated and conscious that I was reading, rather than losing myself in the story. Isabel Costello ‘Seldom, outside the realms of gay royalty like Alan Hollinghurst, have I read a novel about gay people so well written. It’s Ransom’s raw reflection on life, his recognition of the brutality that transforms moments of passing rapture into something dreary, that leaves the reader entranced. A place where the posters aren’t print any more, instead lively lads, with hasty hands and hooded eyes that can’t hide their sameness.Then as the sea settles and Joe learns the truth about the river and finds that we all have the capability to hate, and that we can all make the choice not to. Matt Cain on Instagram: "I was hugely impressed by Jon Ransom’s debut novel The Whale Tattoo but The Gallopers is even better. Jon Ransom’s debut novel, The Whale Tattoo, is filled with prose that picks you up in its wake and takes you on a journey.

With the repetitive use of some phrases and jumping from scene to scene seemingly randomly the whole story seemed chaotic and much of the time impossible to follow. Joe Gunner and the river that keeps mocking him, the death that follows him around and the fragility of everything he holds dear in this book broke my heart as much as it had me glued to each page.And when one day, standing like an idiot staring through the glass that’s covered in clouds galloping across the sky behind, you’ll get an idea. Amidst cruel actions and even crueler taunts, Eli tries to find a balance to his life -wrestling with his own inner desires to try and make himself feel valued - both as a man and for someone to love him as he is. I’m not sure that the publisher’s blurb for The Gallopers is a particularly accurate summing up of the book - I would have been expecting more of an ‘epic’ study of rural gay life from the 50s to the 80s based on what’s said, rather than a carefully focused 6-9 months in the 50s, told in first person style by the young central character in the opening and closing sections, and the central playtext written and notionally set in the 80s, presumably written the narrator. It’s disturbing, honest and seeps into the psyche of the reader in the same way water pervades the narrative.

The prose is dreamlike — or, rather, nightmarish — drifting between the present and memories with an undulating, unpredictable flow. The narrative voice was what grabbed me the most, from start to finish, and it was what made the book stand out for me. There were times where I worried that too much was being held back and I was going to be left at the end with more questions than answers, but to the best of my recollection, I don't think anything was left unanswered. The author has quite distinctive writing style which was pleasure to read, some sections were written as dialogue only and the more descriptive paragraphs in a more straightforward manner. Complex, fraught and violent, The Whale Tattoo reads like an early Tracy Lett’s play – a steaming mix of blue-collar rage and menace.He turns to his sister, Birdee, the only person who has ever listened, but their bond, as well as the one he has with local fisherman and long-time lover Tim Fysh, is not without trouble. The Big Issue’s award-winning journalism covers the angles and stories you won’t see in the daily news. When he was fifteen years old, he was caught in a compromising situation with one of his classmates, Shane Wright, which would forever haunt the two of them.

The books first big surprise could have been handled more adeptly (I can’t say more, no spoilers here). I was interested to see where Eli's story would lead to - 'born with a fondness for pretty things, keeping my fingernails clean, hair combed. There’s such variety of sentence structure, an ebb and flow of past and present that mimics the tides against which the book is set, and an incredibly vivid and vital appeal to the senses that at times it’s almost unbearable to read. The settings are so vividly depicted that the reader can smell and taste them every bit as much as Joe can. Gays, like so many others, existed outside of the need for any other group to understand or accept them.In their different ways, both of this year’s winning books expand our understanding of what LGBTQ+ literature can and should be,” said Paul Burston, prize founder and chair of judges for both categories.