The Whale Tattoo

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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 body of water it holds penetrates the protagonist’s psyche, floods reality in a way that is both hungry and foreboding. 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. 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. I COULD NOT put this book down once I decided to start reading it, each page that turned, drew me further into the story.

The novel adopts a verisimilitude and unvarnished transparency that is both off-putting and engaging. It’s a book packed with explosive secrets and deception, but it’s the hard-to-express emotions and the longing for love that lends this poignant tale its momentum. 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! 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.Ransom’s short stories have appeared in SAND Journal, Foglifter Press and FIVE:2:ONE and most recently, Queer Life, Queer Love. This book felt reminiscent of something like a Max Porter or an Andrew Michael Hurley, at the same time shot through with shades of Douglas Stuart. You breathe the salt air, hear the slap of water against the banks, smell the oil and petrol and the choking diesel fumes. 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.

None of the story’s elements can be considered gratuitous, none can turn the reader away from its pages. 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. Jon's new book The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss. In sometimes dream-like, deliberately disjointed language, a tale is told of after a flood in early 1950s east England somewhere. Short phrases that I think were attempting to evoke some form of deep intellectual thinking, but in fact, just perturbed me.Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.

The story assumes a non linear structure, almost like throwing broken pieces on the ground and arranging them into a collage, an epic of loss and ultimately hope. And grief is central to the narrative to the extent that Joe’s mental health is unbalanced and yet perfectly understandable. 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). It is a novel about Joe Gunner and his life and experiences as a working class child, adolescent and young man dealing with everything that growing up in a decaying fishing town in Norfolk.I loved the idea of a book like Allan Sillitoe or Thomas Mcguane but with a gay MC, but I bounced hard off of the structure. 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. The author’s debut, The Whale Tattoo (Muswell Press), was hailed as "a stunning achievement" by Matt Cain and went to multiple reprints. Reviews in Guardian, Observer, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Sunday Times, The Pink Paper, Gay Times, Diva Magazine, Attitude, G Scene, Spectator. 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.