Waterline
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- £1.99
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- £1.99
Publisher Description
Granta Best Young British Novelist and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
Mick Little used to be a shipbuilder on the Glasgow yards. But as they closed one after another down the river, the search for work took him and his beloved wife, Cathy, to Australia, and back again, struggling for a living, longing for home.
With devastating vision, Ross Raisin brings to life the story of an ordinary man caught in the outer reaches of modern existence, suffering the loss of a great love. Waterline paints a captivating portrait of the alienation of lives lived quietly all around us, and of one man s existence dissolved through grief, and the long journey home."
'There are rare novels that embed themselves in your sensibility so profoundly you can imagine conversations arising between characters that never occurred on the page . . . A work of grace: a human being rendered by a triumph of ventriloquism and empathy' Alan Warner, Guardian
'Spectacular' Time Out
'A poignant, shocking, wry, shaming, yet profoundly generous, and cunningly crafted classic ... If you're looking for the definitive novel for our times, this is the strongest candidate I've read for ages' Scotsman
'Raisin is a novelist of terrific ability and great verve' Philip Hensher, Sunday Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Raisin's (Out Backward) second novel is a powerful depiction of the dislocating effects of grief. Glasgow shipyard worker Mick Little is unmoored when his beloved wife, Cathy, dies of cancer. Blamed by his son for her death, Mick withdraws and slides into despondency and drink. Unable to bear the pitying stares of his friends or the memories of home, he moves to London, but finds few opportunities and little to distract him from his sorrows and submits to a dissolution scarcely imaginable. Raisin's novel, written in a sometimes inscrutable brogue, does not unfold easily. The Beckettian repetition of mourning, numbness, and self-destruction mimics Mick's disorientation and growing dysfunction. But the persistent reader will find his tragic fall and ultimate salvation genuinely moving. Mick is finely rendered as a man alienated by his love and guilt; his downward spiral feels painfully real. Raisin is as likely to linger on a moment of idleness as on Mick's inchoate fury, capturing the cadences of depression and rage. The novel argues for patience and empathy in the face of self-inflicted ruin, even as Mick and his family struggle to find it for themselves.
