The Whale Tattoo

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When a giant sperm whale washes up on the local beach it tells Joe Gunner that death will follow him wherever he goes. The first thing readers are bound to take note of regarding Jon Ransom’s debut novel, THE WHALE TATTOO (2022; 231 pp.

When it finally splinters at the reader’s feet, its belly reveals the turmoil beneath, the intrigue thickened by roiling passions. And when his eyes forget their colour and he is more still than any stone you’ve ever held in the palm of your hand, suddenly you’ll see what it means to be a father.It’s Ransom’s raw reflection on life, his recognition of the brutality that transforms moments of passing rapture into something dreamy that leaves the reader entranced’. 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. The feeling of loneliness was prevalent in his words, and the loss of his mother was something that was believable.

I can not pretend that I gave a very good response but what I tried to explain, very poorly I am sure, was that the day of the 'gay' novel that dealt with 'homosexuality' as something to be explained and justified to a straight audience was over. But, be as much as this story carried the potential to be something noteworthy - it galloped through my mind as quickly as this story unfolded. The author’s debut, The Whale Tattoo (Muswell Press), was hailed as "a stunning achievement" by Matt Cain and went to multiple reprints.They’re just very matter of fact and again like the rest of this book they lack any emotion or creativity.

The book has a rather charming way of story telling, that at first was a little hard (perhaps to do with the linebreaking on the preview copy! Maybe I just didn't like the writing style and other people would love this, but if the book hadn't been so short I would have left this one unfinished. The Whale Tattoo has hints of Iain Bank’s Wasp Factory, and perhaps also The Crow Road, leading you to suspect our protagonist may not be the most reliable narrator of his own life. And grief is central to the narrative to the extent that Joe’s mental health is unbalanced and yet perfectly understandable.

Ransom’s fractured, distinctive prose highlights the beauty and brutality of his story, his extraordinarily vivid sense of place saturates the reader with the wet of the river, and the salty tang of the heaving sea. Despite this, it is worth persisting, and I suspect, it's a book that needs to be read more than once.

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 was just too confusing for me, and if there's someone who has more patience and tolerance who can make an educated guess to explain it to me, I'll be more than happy to read it again with a fresher perspective. Jon's new book The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss. Much like the surface of the river that keeps mocking the protagonist, there’s an ominous tenor behind every word; a beauty that shocks. 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.he felt like a real three-dimensional person, and his struggles, with his sexuality and together with the grief, following the loss of his mother in the flood felt very real. Some of the stylistic choices, while understandable for their intent, make the text slightly difficult to follow in places, but otherwise the novel is well written, with an affecting insight into the lengths that love and loss drive people to and a refreshing frankness about sex. This almost biblical event has affected both the area and Eli greatly, and he's still trying to pick up the pieces of his life. Eli’s aunt allows Jimmy, whose family work the merry-go-round at fairs (the gallopers) to stay in their barn and Eli finds himself becoming obsessed. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.