The Whale Tattoo

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It is disjointed, fragmented, concise, yet filled with keenly discernible as well as contradictory images and phrases.

It seems an odd stylistic choice and now I’m very aware that Paul Murray’s “ The Bee Sting” also saw the author making odd choices and that ended up as my current Book Of The Year but here I’m just puzzled.

The casual queerness was nice but wasn’t a fan of the casual homophobia and the character constantly vomiting everywhere. Notably, the mimetic, lyrical quality of its prose which echoes the bodies of water so central to the The Whale Tattoo’s plot; writing of occasional “ball-aching” beauty (as will become clear if you give this a go), which for all its fluidity, can’t much help the novel feel more than a bit one-note and flat. I appreciate literary fiction, and sometimes I feel that maybe I'm not smart enough to fully understand it, but this inclusion and shift went completely over my head and out the window. Maybe I just didn't like the writing style and other people would love this, but if the book hadn't been so short I would have left this one unfinished.

Once home, Joe finds his father, a man he believes “has never been pleased” by him and who hates Joe’s guts, dying.

I even wonder if I have the right to add my voice to the chorus because it likely only does me credit for joining such distinguished company. It was just too confusing for me, and if there's someone who has more patience and tolerance who can make an educated guess to explain it to me, I'll be more than happy to read it again with a fresher perspective. The distinctive way in which the author portrayed Eli's relationship with Jimmy, an older man who 'blew in like a whirlwind of sorts.