The Whale Tattoo

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A man more alive than any I’d ever gazed upon' was intriguing and I hoped to see what would come of it, especially in comparison to how Eli was treated by Shane. The prose is dreamlike — or, rather, nightmarish — drifting between the present and memories with an undulating, unpredictable flow. 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.

None of the story’s elements can be considered gratuitous, none can turn the reader away from its pages.

And grief is central to the narrative to the extent that Joe’s mental health is unbalanced and yet perfectly understandable. 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. 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. There is plenty of frank sex as well as violence, confusion, anger, love, hate, hope, kindness, generosity, egotism, selfless and selfishness and every other emotion, action and potential action that you can think of.

It may seem contradictory (so much of this novel is), but equally impressive, in spite of the bleakness of Joe’s life and events, there is beauty ever present—be it in Ransom’s writing or the final events which flood the pages of the novel like a rising tide. The first of the books I had highlighted as a must-read for 2024 was very nearly my first five star rating of the year. Under his watchful gaze, Eli discovers a world he knows nothing about with rules he cannot understand.

Complex, fraught and violent, The Whale Tattoo reads like an early Tracy Lett’s play – a steaming mix of blue-collar rage and menace’. From one of the most acclaimed debut novelists of 2022 author of the Polari Prize short listed The Whale Tattoo. Through his encounters with Jimmy, Eli learns more about himself, his sexuality, and what happened to his mother who was thought to have drowned during the flood. There is a sense of detachment from the characters which does feel very English, however, and which steers clear of the melodrama we might associate from the American authors.

The plot was often a little predictable, but there is a great voice in the main protagonist that perfectly captures the feeling of life in a small UK coastal town.

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. Jon's new book The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss. While he struggles to move beyond that incriminating day, he starts up a romantic relationship with one of his aunt Dreama's field-hands, Jimmy Smart, while also trying to better understand how he perceives himself differently from other men and why his feminine sensibilities are one that draw scorn and ridicule from the discerning eyes of his peers. Because of this, local residents think the fields are cursed and respond by acts of hooliganism towards the property. It isn’t a very long section but it does not work as far as I am concerned and I couldn’t see its relevance.

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.As the novel’s first-person narrator, Joe’s story is also told in a non-linear fashion perfectly consistent with the young man’s befuddled nature. He was a mentee on the 2019 Escalator Talent Development scheme at the National Centre for Writing and his short stories have appeared in multiple anthologies, including Queer Life, Queer Love (Muswell Press). 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. 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.