Waterline by Ross Raisin - September 2011

[Clare Bookclub Mod]

I didn't have to go far to stumble on this month's book. It was right in front of me on the New Books shelf. The minute I saw that is was Ross Raisin author of God's Own Country I knew I'd found a gem. God's Own Country was his first novel and I loved every word of it. It also was shortlisted for nine literary awards and he was subsequently named as Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. I want to read whatever he writes.

As a reviewer from The Guardian points out "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."

This new novel is about Mick Little who 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. Thirty years later the yards are nearly all gone and Cathy is dead. And now Mick will have to find a new way to live: to get away, start again, and try to deal with the guilt he feels over her death.