The Whale Tattoo

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By night it makes him piss the bed, by day it is there yipping from the bank, filling his head with rubbish, warning him to give Fysh up. What’s more, every character carries the water’s darkness deep within, every limb appears forged from something indistinct and shapeless. Much like the surface of the river that keeps mocking the protagonist, there’s an ominous tenor behind every word; a beauty that shocks. 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.

Bates added: "Formally daring, The Gallopers is a work of absolute authenticity and rare brilliance that will delight fans of The Whale Tattoo as well as winning Jon a new legion of readers. 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. Jon Ransom's debut novel pulls no punches in a story which at its core is about loss and how people [fail to] deal with it.Joe learns that love and hate are very much interwoven and his adoration of Fysh is so beautifully presented that I could feel his emotions almost viscerally.

The writing balances wistful beauty with ugly truths and spins a tangled web of jealousy, small town secrets and the power of grief to consume you along with everyone around you. Jon Ransom won the Polari First Novel Prize for his debut “ The Whale Tattoo” (2022) which I really enjoyed giving it four stars and describing it as “ dark, raw and relentlessly gritty. This was a particular concern with the imagery around water and the eponymous whale tattoo, but this all makes sense. I really struggled to read this and in the end I had to admit defeat and give up reading at around the halfway mark. I even wonder if I have the right to add my voice to the chorus because it likely only does me credit for joining such distinguished company.Within the first few pages, both Joe’s discomfort and his torturous affection for Fysh are defined with remarkable efficiency, creating a hook that sinks far too deep to ignore. The ‘river’ sequences felt silly at first, but as the book went on it was like taking a dip into Joe’s psyche. I liked the way the floods were described and this dreariness of the southern lifestyle at that time was something that I felt.