Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack

Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack

Sixty Degrees North

Around the World in Search of Home

by Malachy Tallack

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Published:
  • Jul 2016, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

From the northern wilds of Greenland and Scotland to the far away reaches of Scandinavia and Siberia, a moving meditation on the allure of travel and the meaning of home.

The sixtieth parallel marks a borderland between the northern and southern worlds. Wrapping itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden, and Norway, it crosses the tip of Greenland and the southern coast of Alaska, and slices the great expanses of Russia and Canada in half. The parallel also passes through Shetland, where Malachy Tallack has spent most of his life.

In Sixty Degrees North, Tallack travels westward, exploring the landscapes of the parallel and the ways that people have interacted with those landscapes, highlighting themes of wildness and community, isolation and engagement, exile and memory.

An intimate journey of the heart and mind, Sixty Degrees North begins with the author's loss of his father and his own troubled relationship with Shetland, and concludes with an embrace of the place he calls home.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. An enthralling meditation on place." - Kirkus

"Readers interested in the regions and peoples around the 60th parallel will be drawn to this work." - Library Journal

"A subtle, thoughtful study of life on the sixtieth parallel. Highly enjoyable." - The Financial Times (UK)

"Tallack is one of a burgeoning group of young travel writers who have reinvigorated the genre with elements of psychogeography: the study of how places make us feel." - The Guardian (UK)

"It is a brave book...and a beautiful book." - Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

"Malachy Tallack is the real deal, a writer given over to pure curiosity, honest witness and that most precious of gifts, an unselfconscious sense of wonder. Not just a vibrant new voice, but a wise, questioning and highly sophisticated talent." - John Burnside, author of Waking Up in Toytown: A Memoir

"Elegant, meditative, and wry. Tallack takes the reader on some fascinating excursions." - Gavin Francis, author of True North: Travels in Arctic Europe

This information about Sixty Degrees North 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.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Malachy Tallack

Malachy Tallack has written for the New Statesman,The Guardian, the Scottish Review of Books and many other publications. He won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014 and the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015. As a singer-songwriter, he has released four albums and an EP, and performed in venues across the United Kingdom. He is editor of the online magazine The Island Review and co-editor of Fair Isle: Through the Seasons. He is from Shetland and currently lives in Glasgow.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Sixty Degrees North, try these:

  • North Woods jacket

    North Woods

    by Daniel Mason

    Published 2024

    About this book

    A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.

  • Disappearing Earth jacket

    Disappearing Earth

    by Julia Phillips

    Published 2020

    About this book

    Spellbinding, moving - evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world - this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.

  • The Sun Is a Compass jacket

    The Sun Is a Compass

    by Caroline Van Hemert

    Published 2020

    About this book

    The gripping story of a biologist's journey from Washington State to high above the Arctic Circle - traveling across remote and rugged terrain solely by human power - to rediscover birds, the natural world, and her own love of science.

We have 10 read-alikes for Sixty Degrees North, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Travel & Adventure

Browse all Travel & Adventure books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
  • Book Jacket
    Somebody Worth Killing
    by Jessica Payne
    Meet Nadia Davis, loving mom, devoted wife, secret assassin… and she needs a babysitter.
  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
Who Said...

Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

S the B

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.