This is wonderful book, beautifully written and allows the reader to fully emerge in the story and characters. Jack is living alone on Shetland, taking odd jobs, minding his garden and most importantly for him playing and writing music. His father was a whale hunter, his mother a cottage knitter and living with them also was his grand uncle. A family tragedy prevented him from living his music dream on the mainland.
He receives a gift of a kitten and this totally disrupts his life and forces him to engage with other islanders.

A wonderful book, a thorough recommendation.

Thanks to NetGalley.co.uk for this DRC.

🐈‍⬛ Low plot high vibes
🐈‍⬛ Country music
🐈‍⬛ Remote Scotland

If a book wrapped you in a blanket and binge watched your fav tv series with you whilst feeding you snacks and stroking your hair, this would be it. The comfort created in this book was profound and whilst it absolutely pulled on my heartstrings and moved me to tears, it did so in the most gentle and tender ways.

Jack lives alone on a remote corner of the Shetland Islands where he whiles away the days writing country music no one but he gets to hear. When someone mysteriously leaves a kitten at his door, his heart and home are opened to both the kitten and its biggest fan, his young neighbour. The book combines Jack’s present timeline and his origin story.

This was a gorgeous study on loneliness and finding connection in community. We spend a lot of time in Jack’s head, as does he so as a reader you really empathise with his overthinking and feel his reluctant yearning for connection in your bones. On the surface Jack is gruff and stoic but we have the privilege of seeing and understanding his vulnerability and depth. This is beautifully demonstrated by the hand written song lyrics peppered through the chapters. The book also has an accompanying soundtrack on Spotify.

The back story of Jack’s parents does a great job of setting the island scene and giving context but it also takes on a life of its own in a moving crescendo to an incredible and vivid ending.

Thanks to NetGalley and canongate books for this ebook review copy.

Such a moving and beautifully rendered novel that was equally compelling and engaging. I found the characters vivid, true to life, and so full of depth. I felt I knew them.

There's a lot to love in this engrossing book that I couldn't put down. Loved it
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A beautifully written novel. This is a book that looks at a family who live on the Isle of Shetland. It’s beautiful and that’s not a word I’d often use but it’s very fitting. It looks at relationships and how they differ for everyone. Music plays such a major part there is an accompanying album which I’ll be buying.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my digital proof of That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack. It was a quiet, haunting and thoroughly engaging read. The whaling descriptions are not for the faint hearted, but do persevere, it's really worth it. Recommended.

I thought this was excellent. Very endearing and wholesome. Well written. I read it over two days so was gripped.

As a huge music lover, I was very excited to read That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz - my first time reading Malachy Tallack's work. The story is a bittersweet one: a boy living on the Shetlands is orphaned when his parents die in an accident. As a 65-year old man, we see him befriend a young girl after a kitten shows up unexpectedly on his doorstep. The writing is lovely at times in a gentle way, and is an interesting depiction of isolation and connection while living on a remote island. The musical reference is in relation to country music, rather than classical as I was initially hoping.

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.