Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2012
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
Paperback Original
"A compassionate portrait of a man on the verge filled with disquieting tension." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] powerful depiction of the dislocating effects of grief." - Publishers Weekly
"It is harrowing, and powerfully expressed, but the novel loses a good deal of momentum once the lower depths have been reached... Raisin is a novelist of terrific ability and great verve. I hope with his next novel he allows himself to spread out, to tell us a range of stories. One day he is going to write a masterpiece." - The Telegraph (UK)
"A schmaltzy, sun-kissed ending disappoints, and makes me wonder if the reason for a sly pop at the Richard and Judy Book Club earlier in the novel lies less in mischief than anxiety. Even so, I'd love to know what Raisin is working on now - do his effects depend on a hard-luck story, or can he wring pathos from a scenario that doesn't come with its sadness ready-made?" - The Guardian (UK)
"There is a sense of Raisin marking time with Waterline, but there can be no doubt that he is a writer of outstanding talent and it will be fascinating to see what he comes up with next." - The Independent (UK)
This information about Waterline was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ross Raisin holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London, where he resides. Waterline is his first novel published in the US. He is also the author of God's Own Country, published in the UK.
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