Waterline - Softcover

Raisin, Ross

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0670917354 ISBN 13: 9780670917358

Publisher: Viking, 2011

Synopsis

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. 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.

In his devastating new novel Ross Raisin brings vividly to life the story of an ordinary man caught between the loss of a great love and the hard edges of modern existence. Tracing Mick's journey from the Glasgow shipyards to the crowded, sweating kitchens of an airport hotel, to the streets and riversides of London, it is an intensely moving portrait of a life being lived all around us, and a story for our times.

About this title

Review

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)

What impresses about Raisin is the all-encompassing nature of his imaginative empathy, and the way in which he makes the reader complicit in his character's fate

(Sunday Times)

Mick's story is one you won't forget. With this second novel Ross Raisin confirms himself as an exciting talent, a unique, gifted and generous voice, a young writer with a vision broad far beyond his years

(David Vann Financial Times)

Waterline announces Raisin as a profound thinker as well as a distinctive voice

(Esquire)

A writer of outstanding talent (Independent on Sunday)

Stunning in its maturity and descriptive voice . . . Raisin is shaping up to be one of our most extraordinary writers (Telegraph)

Beautiful ... Waterline's great achievement is in giving a convincing and moving voice to an element of society that is rarely so emotively heard (Dazed & Confused)

About the Author

Ross Raisin is the author of Out Backward, winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, a Betty Trask Award, and other honors. He lives in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670917354
• ISBN 13: 9780670917358
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272