What can I say but beautiful! This is just such an exquisitely written book that has such a gentle pace reflecting the main character, it’s simply beautiful. The dual timelines of Sonny’s and Jack’s stories intertwine just perfectly in this lilting tale. Jack’s relationship with young Vaila and the mysterious kitten is one to melt your heart, full of such innocence and pure love. A novel of atmosphere, emotion, friendship and all in all heartwarming, I adored this book.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Canongate Books, for a copy in exchange for a review.

Shetland-set family tale of love, loss and connection

In my fourth read of the year set in the Highlands and Islands, Tallack weaves a gentle family tale that covers love and loss, isolation and rebirth, never shying away from the pain as well as the hope to be found in the human condition.

Using parallel narratives in the life of one Jack, his growing up with loving parents Sonny and Kathleen, and Great Uncle Tom, and his own isolated old age, feeling at the end of everything, Tallack shows that even an old dog can re-learn old tricks, that the love that once existed never fades away but reverberates, returns when the right trigger comes along. Yes, there's a kitten that appears that relights Jack's fire but it's the consequences beyond this first encounter that bring Jack back from the brink of living death and right back to living again.

Of course, the sea plays a huge part in this book, as any book concerning the Islands must, but only as a force of nature, neither to be blamed nor appealed to. Everything that Jack needs to live again is inside him, and Tallack does a very good job in illuminating Jack's seemingly insurmountable journey.

My only criticism is Tallack's attempt to describe music as the catalyst and product of Jack's own attention; perhaps in Tallack's formulation it made sense, but for me the songs he writes about didn't make it off the page.

Four very well-deserved stars.

In Shetland there are not many opportunities for young men at this time so Sonny, like many of his generation went off to the whaling in the South Atlantic. After a particularly violent storm Sonny decides to go home. He marries Kathleen & they live with Uncle Tom. Sonny finds this hard. He is by nature a loner & although he loves his wife & their son, Jack, he finds the connection difficult. Most of the story follows Jack, his parents died & sea & now in his sixties he lives a quiet life surrounded by his Country & Western music, both listening & making it. When a box containing a small kitten arrives on his doorstep, in spite of him not wanting anything to do with it, it opens the door to a less lonely life.

This was such a beautifully written book. It was gentle & descriptive & drew me in completely. I have lived in Shetland for over 20yrs & I particularly enjoyed reading of the time before the oil came. Jack was such a wonderful character! Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this lovely book.

That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack

I think I’ve found another favourite for 2024. That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz is a gorgeous little novel set on Shetland about life, love, connection and country music, beautifully evocative of island life and times past.

I discovered upon finishing the book that Malachy Tallack released his debut album - also called That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz - simultaneously with the publication of the book and I’m smitten. A book with its own soundtrack.

Jack Paton is a man in his sixties living on Shetland where he grew up. He lives a quiet life, with just his country music for company, until something turns up on his doorstep that changes the rhythm of his solitary existence.

The story moves between past and present, telling us the story of Jack’s parents, his father Sonny a whaler, and Jack’s life in the present day with newfound company, punctuated by handwritten lyrics between chapters. I could not have loved it more.

There’s a simplicity and an honesty to the story that will resonate with readers. It’s a perfect one to buy for someone for Christmas who loves a gentle story and appreciates wonderful literary fiction.

A wild card! I’d recommend reading the book and stopping after each chapter to listen to the song after each chapter on Spotify. I can’t guarantee you won’t cry.

I’m buying it for my Dad for Christmas. It’s a slow-down-and-savour-it book. I’m giving it 5/5⭐️.

I feel a kind of connection to Shetland as my late grandmother and her 12 siblings were born there and I like to read books set in that part of the world. I enjoyed this one. It's beautifully written and I felt as if I recognised some of the characters.

Jack Paton is in his 60s, has never been married, and lives in a house he inherited from his parents. He's a bit of a loner and doesn't find it easy to talk to people. He's an avid fan of country music and spends hours playing his guitar and singing and writing songs – but only for himself, never in public.

However one day returns home to find a cardboard box on his doorstep. Inside is a kitten. He has no idea who has left it there. Was it someone pranking him? He ventures down to his neighbour to ask if she saw anyone going up the track to his house. She suggests he keeps it in his house to see if someone comes back to claim it. Anyway from then on his life starts to change.

I love how the author describes the landscape and locations. The dialogue between the characters is spot on. I can hear their voices. (Jack kind of reminds me of my grandmother's brother who I first met when he was in his 60s. He was a man of few words too and spoke Shetland dialect).

We get background into Jack and his parents, especially his father. In fact the opening chapter is set in 1957 on a whaling ship in the South Atlantic where Jack's father is a 20 year old deck boy with plans to make some money, go home, get married and start a family.

I got the feeling Jack just goes with the flow. Things are what they are and he doesn't really go after anything. The one time he does make a decision and takes a chance, things don't work out as he planned.

It's not a sad book of regrets. It's gentle with some humour – a little slice of Jack's life.

Haunting and beautiful.
The story of Jack, born in the Shetlands to Sonny a whaler and Katherine. The story starts with Sonny on a whaling expedition in rough sea, it is a difficult and dangerous life and gives him a suspicious outlook on life. When he gets home he marries Katherine and they move in with her Uncle Tom, Sonny extends the croft but is never really happy living with Tom. When Jack is born, things start to improve and Tom takes a great interest in Jack's upbringing. Jack is not sociable and struggles in company, he has a guitar which he plays privately in his room. Jack helps out a neighbour Henry who has broken his leg, he is intrigued by his daughter, but Henry warns him off her. Jack moves to Glasgow but a tragedy brings him home. He has to settle back into the crofting life and finds solace in an unexpected gift. Country songs that Jack writes are scattered about the book.
I enjoy novels that take place by or on the sea, this one is especially descriptive.

The beautiful prose is perfect to portray the characters and their relationships in this story that gives insights into corners of the world not usually examined.
While not very much happens, this is the way lives are lived and it is good to have an author prepared to share these realities in fiction.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

'But regret, he felt. And nostalgia, too. And he felt, as well, a kind of backward yearning for which he did not have an adequate word. He wished sometimes, with an intensity that could knock him almost off his feet, that he had lived a different life.'

A simply stunning novel, a rare kind of book that will make you stop and question your own life. Have I lived it well? Am I happy with who and where I am? Malachy Tallack has written a novel of quiet intensity, the story of Jack Paton, his parents and his life in Shetland, seeing through the last years of his life in the old family home. He keeps himself to himself, a man of routine, grunting responses to the people he happens to meet if he's popped out for some shopping. His passion is country music, in which he loses himself to escape his own life. And then, one day, a box is left om his doorstep and everything changes.

The box contains a kitten, and as Jack slowly adapts his life to accommodate this little ball of fluff his neighbour's daughter starts to come over to play with the kitten as well. And so starts an unlikely friendship, as Jack starts to enjoy life again. Interspersed with this modern-day story we get the story of Jack's parents, Sonny and Kathleen, and their life together on Shetland. It is a story of a way of life, of a culture and history of a proud and distinct Shetland way of life. It is the story of a landscape that is in equal parts beautiful and cruel. And it is the story of why Jack Paton is who he is, and why music is so important to him.

As I say, some books just make you stop and re-think your entire life choices. It is beautifully written, as befits a songwriter, and the characters are deftly observed. Gentle, powerful, this is definitely one of my books of 2024.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Who's cutting onions around here, eh?!

The gentleness of That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz reminds one of life in remote places, where life goes on non-urgently, at its own quiet pace that cannot be hurried along, where everything get put into perspective ...we are just a speck in the universe. But the essence of the novel also reminds one about how harsh life can be in remote places, where nature is a force to reckon with, playing us as marionettes, and no matter how quiet and non-urgent life can be, one still cannot escape its cruelness! But hope is there, one just need to open up to it!

Needless to say I LOVED That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz and I loved the relationships explored in it! And Loretta, who wouldn't love her, eh?! Sadness going hand in hand with warmheartedness, while dancing on country music! Just perfect!

I was sent a copy of That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack to read and review by NetGalley. This is a quiet and thoughtful book – once you get past the whaling in the first few chapters! The characters are very believable and there is a great sense of place, both on the Whaling ship at sea and back home in Shetland. This is very much a novel about relationships and the choices we make or are forced to make in life. Very engaging.

What beautiful lyrical prose. Each word carefully selected and not one wasted. Unlike Jack, who has spent his life on Shetland, only working to earn enough to live on and conversing enough to be polite. His existence revolved around music, routine and memories, until a box is left on his doorstep one evening.
I loved this writing. I could picture Jack in his home, his walks up the hill, his place of work and visit to the shop.
Magical

This book tells us Jack’s story. We meet him when he is in his sixties, living in a sparsely populated place in Shetland leading a quiet and unremarkable life. People thought of him as a good man if they thought of him at all. Although quite content with his existence, he is also very much aware of the things missing in his life, like companionship and reciprocal love. He feels this void deeply, even when their absence doesn’t cause him pain. There is an unidentified longing for an indiscriminate ‘more’ in him that explains his love of country music, a music that reflects his state of mind and heart perfectly: the longing for a place that you’ll never reach and for a person you can never be with.

When a kitten and a little girl step into his life, they open the floodgates of reflection that lead him to feel a deep ache for the Jack he could have been, but they also open the door to a greater vulnerability allowing feelings of tenderness and love.

This book is so beautifully written, I didn’t want it to end. Although not much ever happens, Jack’s inner world is vast. He harbours deep feelings and desires and his musings and ponderings are expressed with so much warmth, honesty and precision that it made my heart ache. At the end I felt sorry to let him go but I am ever so glad to have met him.

I am grateful to NetGalley and Canongate for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Beautiful, heartwarming and lyrical, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel! Set in Shetland the tale interweaves the lives of several generations of islanders from the course of 1957 to the present day. We meet Sonny, who prides himself on hard work and yet is caught up in the whaling business which he finds harsh and brutal. His son Jack, a deep thinker with a passion for music who finds himself living an almost entirely solitary existence until an unexpected box turns up on his doorstep. Plus a plethora of other characters who have hints of plenty of stories of their own. There were so many things I loved about this book. The writing was sublime and the scenes were painted so well that I found I could picture the island and events incredibly clearly in my imagination. The characters, even the background ones, were believable and real with full lives and I finished the book feeling like each person could easily have warranted their own books too. Most of all though what stood out to me was the novels themes of belonging, purpose, how our time on earth is spent, the land and tradition. How these themes return like a tide, appearing for each generation for them to decide what to do with them, whether they are a weight or an anchor, something to be passed over or lived by, how much they are imposed or we take them on and the consequences of these decisions. A book I know I will be reflecting on for some time to come.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for this review.

It was the title that drew me to this book and the author is not someone I have come across before. The story spans two time periods and tells the tale of Sonny and Kathleen and their lives on Shetland, as well as Sonny's life at sea. They are the parents of Jack, whose story we are introduced to as he reaches his later stage of life. The synopsis may not sound like much but there is something really magical about this book - unarguably the quality of writing and musical references interspersed throughout. It is a gentle tale for sure - but I needed this after a couple of heavy thrillers / gothic tales recently. I loved getting to know Jack and how his life was shaped by the life of his parents, and their unexplained disappearance which led to him being quite solitary, When Jack receives a surprising gift left on his doorstep, this brings new adventures and friendships into his life. It's wonderful to read these developing.

Definitely not a high octane book, but genuinely beautiful and well worth investing the time.

This is a very quiet novel. 62 year old Jack Paton has lived most of his life in the same house on Shetland. An introvert who avoids social interactions, he is a huge fan of American country music and once had ambitions to be a singer. This is a novel of opportunities passing by and of seeking to make the best of things.
A box left on his doorstep gradually leads to him coming out of his shell, but always cautiously and ready to retreat if circumstances dictate. At 240 pages in the hardback edition this is a quick read written with a sensitivity and gentleness which is intoxicating. Jack loves evenings with his guitar and writing songs, examples of which appear throughout the text. Alongside this present-day narrative is the story of his family. His father spent his youth as part of a whaling crew, trading the isolation of the Shetland Isles to the barrenness of the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, amongst the penguins. This sense of adventure is not passed onto his son, whose one attempt to make a break from his own quiet existence dissolved in tragic circumstances.
I very much appreciated the introspection of this novel. I found myself imagining dramatic plot twists which I really did not want to happen. In the recording of this solitary life which Jack sometimes regards as a hopeless squandering the writer’s skill at sustaining a mood is evident. Not much happens yet it is hard to put down.
I wasn’t aware of Scottish author and Shetland resident Malachy Tallack before this. He has written columns and published non-fiction work on his own remote rural life. This is his second novel and bringing his main character’s dreams to life he is also a singer-songwriter who has recorded three albums. Anyone just willing to slow the pace down a little will find a great deal to enjoy in this novel.
“That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz” is published by Canongate on October 24th. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

This is the story of Jack, a solitary man in his 60s living in Shetland. Never married, comfortable enough in the rather spartan life he lives in his relatively isolated house, he avoids much contact with other people apart from the absolutely necessary, tends his garden, goes for walks and focuses on his secret love - listening to country music and writing his own songs. His days are structured and measured, but we are set up to wonder what has made him the relative hermit that he is.

Jack's story is juxtaposed with that of his parents - his father a former whale hunter who gave it up after surviving a terrible storm, his mother a housewife with a cottage knitting industry - and his great-uncle whom they all live with. From quite an early age he shows signs of what I thought was likely to be mild autism or an anxiety disorder, lively at home but increasingly reticent and withdrawn outside the immediate family. At 21 he decides to move to Glasgow, seeking a footing in the music industry, but tragedy strikes when his parents go out in their boat and go missing, presumed dead. He comes back to Shetland to deal with this, and simply never leaves again.

Fast forward to the present, when one day he finds a box on his doorstep containing a kitten. This event sets the scene for more change and disruption to his carefully ordered isolation than he has ever had to deal with thus far.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn't quite what I got. I was expecting something contemplative, elegiac, and I could se that that's what the author was striving for, but to my mind the finished product is altogether more slight than I had hoped for. It is written with a care and precision that is almost too good for this story, which is a little slice of whimsy that undeniably does sentimentality well, but doesn't really rise above being a bit of fluff for my money. Like the country music which somewhat incongruously pervades the novel, it hits a spot in the moment but has little lasting profundity. I did enjoy it but it's not one I'd ever dream of revisiting.

This isn't a shock and a twist book. Buts it's beautiful to read. It's calming and soothing and is so smooth in the telling and therefore reading.
It wasn't lacking in a storyline just because it wasn't high octane or full of big bold storylines.
This was a new author for me and one I want to investigate more of.

Oh dear, I'm sorry to say this put me in mind of Colm from Derry Girls. Something did happen, but it wasn't very exciting and it took far too long to get to that point.

Wow, what a gorgeous book from another writer who is new to me. So atmospheric with its descriptions of Shetland, a place I have never visited but which is on my bucket list. We have two timelines. We meet Sonny when he is about 18 in the 1950s when he is a whaler on the Atlantic - a harsh environment and one that could have killed him. We follow him as he returns to the mainland and settles in a croft where he builds a life. He is a hard worker, a loving husband and a strict parent. In present day we have Jack, a solitary man in his 60s and he is almost the polar opposite of Sonny. He is quiet, unambitious and loves his country music. He has CDs galore of all his country music favourites, but he also writes his own songs. He would have loved to pursue a career in music but is never happened. So he lives in his cottage having no real contact with anyone apart from the woman at the little shop who he was at school with. So, this is partly a story of isolation - but you can't actually say that Jack is unhappy - he has a certain level of contentment in his heart and he still continues to write his songs - songs that will never be played to an audience. His life changes when he finds a box on his doorstep one day and he finds his circle of 'friends' suddenly change and he finds that he smiles more. The slowly building relationships that form are lovely to observe. A lovely story about the power of friendship - and music. Throughout the novel, lyrics to Jack's songs are interspersed and I believe that the author - who is also a musician - is releasing these as an album to coincide with the publication of the book - but I might have got that wrong. I loved the characterisation of Jack and those in his circle - a lovely read. Rounded up to a 5*

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It is gentle tale, beautifully told by an author new to me and I do love to discover a new voice.

The story is about Jack Paton, his friendship with a kitten and a little girl along with the story of his parents, Sonny and Kathleen. Jack is a solitary soul but his world is upended one day when a box is left on his doorstep containing a kitten. The kitten brings him into contact with Sarah and her daughter Vaila who live next door and a friendship he didn't expect.

The story also tells the history of Jack's father, Sonny, who worked as a whaler in the South Atlantic before returning to Shetland to marry Kathleen. The couple went missing one day while Jack is away from home and haven't been seen since. All that washed up was their boat. Jack has lived a solitary life ever since.

I can't really say what drew me to this book because the story is such a simple one but often, a simple story is all you need. The writing is wonderful and, as Jack's story unfolds, we get glimpses of his passion for country music. I'm not a fan of this genre but I listened to a lot of the artists as I read and the voices are hauntingly beautiful - much like the book.

Excellent. Highly recommended for anyone wanting an uplifting tale with some highly emotional scenes. Loved it.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Canongate Books for the advance review copy.