This book opens in the South Atlantic ocean in 1957 with Sonny on a whaling boat. There is a violent storm and an enormous wave that nearly sinks his ship. Sonny - a 20 year old deck boy - decides that when he returns to Shetland he will marry a girl who caught his eye before he left and he will not go back to whaling again. After that we meet Jack, a solitary man and ageing, who lives in the house he was born in on Shetland. He is retired now, both his parents are dead and he lives a quiet and simple life rarely going far from the area he was born in. The book alternates between these two threads following, and going back over, lives lived.

Fairly quickly we discover that Sonny did return to Shetland and marry the girl of his dreams. Life is hard in those days but they are happy together and start a family. Jack's house is isolated with only one neighbour who is at all close. He has had various jobs over the years but the real love of his life is Country music. He collects both the music and guitars. However there are very few people he interacts with other than visits to the very small local shop run by a lady he was at school with and the occasional visit to the supermarket further away..

I guess this is a book about isolation and the inner strength to deal with that - an acceptance of what is and what has been maybe. The chapters in the book are interspersed with hand written Country and Western songs by Jack and heard by no one other than him. However the world has a way of intruding on people sometimes. Jack has a visitor and a mystery gift.

Sonny and his wife (and other family members) are rather more sketched than fleshed out though that worked well for me. Without doubt Jack is the star of this book though. As a person he is far bigger than the small world he inhabits and in a wonderfully positive way. Shetland as the setting with its isolation worked very well for me. While that sense of isolation comes over well the feeling of community too is very apparent in both timelines. While in my notes the word "loneliness" crops up several times this is not in a depressing way and Jack does reflect on that.

It's fair to say that this is a book I really enjoyed - indeed I was affected quite a lot simply by it ending. I found Jack as a character one of the better ones I've come across over quite a few years. The tone of the book and writing worked well for me. Some of the events that take place are very dramatic and some are really quite small - almost all were powerful and it is just possible that a tear will be shed when reading this. It is several weeks after finishing this that I am writing this review and even now my eyes are unaccountably moist… 4.5/5 and certainly one of the best of the year for me.

Malachy Tallack is a singer-songwriter as well as an established writer of books about his beloved Shetland. His second novel is about a man who has spent almost his entire life in one place who finds an unexpected friendship.
Jack's father had worked on a whaling ship in the 1950s. Opportunities were rare in Shetland, and whaling money was good. Sonny salted his away, marrying Kathleen in 1958. Jack was born two years later, growing into a quiet boy who knew to avoid his father’s temper. Sonny brought a passion for music back from South Georgia, passing it on to his son who became an ardent country music fan. Now in his sixties, he’s a man of simple routine with many acquaintances who have never quite become friends. Songs are still written but the fuzzy ambition to become a singer which sent him to Glasgow for a few weeks four decades ago has long gone. One day a cardboard box containing a kitten is left on his doorstep to Jack's consternation. Loretta is a tiny thing but she’s the spark for a surprising change in Jack’s life.
Tallack weaves Sonny and Kathleen’s story through Jack’s present in episodes that are often vividly lyrical in contrast to their son’s mundane life. There are passages of beautiful descriptive writing in both narratives, Jack’s threaded through with a gentle, affectionate humour and steeped in music. Tallack is a close observer, not least of cat behaviour: Loretta is as lovingly drawn as Jack himself, and eight-year-old Vaila’s adoration of her is spot on. I thoroughly enjoyed this touching novel which steers well clear of sentimentality.