The Whale Tattoo

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Jon Ransom is the author of The Whale Tattoo, which was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2023, and named a Guardian Best Fiction of 2022. 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. The only thing is Norfolk itself doesn't feature as much, having spent a lot of time there when I was younger, and given the prominence of the description, I rather thought it was going to be a book that was of it's time and place. Joe’s disregard for his own wellbeing fills each scene, from simple things like instantly getting his clothes dirty, to pushing genuine people away and putting himself in dangerous situations. It’s disturbing, honest and seeps into the psyche of the reader in the same way water pervades the narrative.

Two-hundred and twenty-nine pages of words that fell out of your head are bound inside a pleasing cover depicting a lad who’s a little bit like you. In sometimes dream-like, deliberately disjointed language, a tale is told of after a flood in early 1950s east England somewhere.

Photograph: Sophie Davidson View image in fullscreen Opening up what we believe is possible … Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea. This was an incredibly immersive and compelling read, that was at times dizzying, often heartbreaking, and with just enough hopefulness to keep my head above water.

Much like the surface of the river that keeps mocking the protagonist, there’s an ominous tenor behind every word; a beauty that shocks. Matt Cain on Instagram: "I was hugely impressed by Jon Ransom’s debut novel The Whale Tattoo but The Gallopers is even better. As the water settles and Joe learns the truth about the river, he finds that we all have the capability to hate, and that we can all make the choice not to.

Loss, grief, jealousy, love and lust are all full-bodied entities battling over space on every page, but the mundanity that houses them leaves little room for sentimentality. Ultimately, this is a tale of hope in the face of our demons and an exercise in finding the beauty and tenderness in the brutality of life. Complex, fraught and violent, The Whale Tattoo reads like an early Tracy Lett’s play – a steaming mix of blue-collar rage and menace’. 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.

It left me feeling frustrated and conscious that I was reading, rather than losing myself in the story. From one of the most acclaimed debut novelists of 2022 author of The Whale Tattoo, winner of the Polari Prize First Book award 2023, Jon's new book The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss . The ‘river’ sequences felt silly at first, but as the book went on it was like taking a dip into Joe’s psyche. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone and of course to those who like myself, generally do not read too much!I really struggled to read this and in the end I had to admit defeat and give up reading at around the halfway mark. You can read more about the purposes for which we and our partners use cookies and manage your cookie settings by visiting our Cookie Policy. The book convincingly portrays the claustrophobia of an English small town, especially where you grow up queer and people live hard lives.

By night it makes him pi*s the bed, by day it is there yipping from the bank, filling his head with rubbish, warning him to give Fysh up. Of greater concern is the river water which flows near where Joe is staying which Joe is repeatedly drawn to—water which talks to Joe, telling echoing, worrisome, and dire comments made by the whale. Queerness, poverty, mental health, class and redemption all jostle cheek by jowl against a filthy beautiful landscape of edges and erosion.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. The closing quarter of this book is filled with every twist and turn imaginable, making this more of a thriller in it’s final throws. I’d had heard the great storm of 1952,when there I was a bad winter storm at the same time as high spring tide, which caused catastrophic flooding throughout a large part of the east of England around the wash. I’m not honestly sure how well the playtext fits: it felt more interesting than essential but having finished the book I’m minded to reread that section with the knowledge of what will happen.