The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
 
When a giant sperm whale washes up on the local beach and tells Joe Gunner that death will follow him wherever he goes, Joe knows that the place he needs to go is back home. Having stormed out two years ago, it won't be easy, nor will returning to the river alongside the house where words ripple beneath the muddy black water washing up all sorts of memories and disturbing prophesies.   Then there's Tim Fysh. A local fisherman and longtime lover.

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.   
 
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'The Whale Tattoo is a stunning achievement - one of the most 
impressive and assured debuts I've ever read.' - Matt Cain

'A bold, brilliant and beautiful debut.' - Suzanna Dunn

'Raw, uncompromising, and authentic, a remarkable debut from an 
astonishingly gifted writer.' - Golnoosh Nour

'With assured narrative, a vivid sense of place and atmosphere, and 
flint-sharp dialogue, Jon Ransom has written a novel that is bleak and 
brutal, but never sentimental.. utterly authentic and cruelly 
beautiful.' - Matt Bates