“The only thing he ever hoarded, other than solitude, was music.” (Malachy Tallack, That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz)

/ madamebibilophile

I wanted to read That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack (2024) ever since I heard about it on Susan’s blog where it also made her Books of the Year. Everything about it appealed: the Shetland setting, the portrait of a life quietly lived, the theme of friendship and the concise but descriptive style. My hopes were ridiculously high; they were also fully met.

There are two timelines, one which begins in the late 1950s with Sonny on a whaling ship, following his marriage to Kathleen and family life with their son Jack and her uncle Tom, ending in the 1970s. The other follows solitary Jack in late middle-age, in the present day.

Apart from a brief few weeks in Glasgow, Jack has always lived in the same house on the croft in Shetland:

“He had so many memories of this room that it seemed not separate from him at all but a part of who he was and who he had always been. He had done so much of his living in this room.”

He is for the most part content with his life: taking walks, keeping his part time job ticking over, listening to his beloved country music and writing songs no-one will hear.

Tallack is a musician and he writes beautifully about music and all it can mean to people; how listening to it can be transcendental and how writing it can be a solitary act which simultaneously opens you up to the world. Jack’s handwritten songs punctuate the story and expand his portrayal beyond his immediate situation.

“To love was an act of imagination. It was to create possible futures, to build new and better selves. When love ended, those futures and those selves were what was lost. Jack knew something of loving from writing love songs. And he knew something of heartbreak, too.”

Jack is not especially damaged or traumatised, but he is a man whose solitary nature has found a space where it is never needed to be otherwise. He grew up in a house where feelings, worries and hopes were not discussed. His father Sonny is a man quick to anger who finds:

“So often feelings came to him like that: in a knot he was ill equipped to undo.”

While his more gregarious mother Kathleen doesn’t know how to broach her son’s silence:

“She listened, feeling the tears creep down her cheeks, not thinking of anything in particular, just hearing that cumbersome music, with a closed door between herself and her son.”

Life changes for Jack when someone leaves a kitten on his doorstep. He doesn’t want the cat but sometimes we share our lives with those we could never imagine choosing, and so Jack finds himself no longer living alone but with energetic, cheeky Loretta (named after Lynn). And his life begins to expand in ways he could not foresee.

In That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz, Tallack has crafted a story of such humane understanding and kindness. It isn’t remotely sentimental in its portrayal of the capacity of human beings to reach one another and to change.

An absolute gem.

To end, the author performing his titular song:

19 thoughts on ““The only thing he ever hoarded, other than solitude, was music.” (Malachy Tallack, That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz)”

  1. I had not heard of this author before. This sounds absolutely sublime. I love those quotes you’ve cited. Your blog is proving a very dangerous place for me to visit if I want to hold onto my hope to reduce the tbr pile this year. Do I care very much? …..well, I’ve already reserved one of his other books (The Valley at the Centre of the World) at my library!

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      • Hi Madame Bibi, I hope you are OK and just having a blogging rest after your marathon reading and reviewing in May. I’m just popping back to say that, on the back of your recommendation, I suggested this book as a library purchase. The library duly obliged, and I have just finished reading it.

        Thank you for bringing this author to my attention. I loved this book and I loved the songs!

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        • That’s wonderful, thank you so much for letting me know. I’m overjoyed that you liked it! I hope many more of the readers at the library will too.

          Yes, just having a break! I’m enjoying reading & chatting on everyone else’s blogs but taking the pressure off writing my own for now. I’ve also got my final essay due in this weekend for a course I’m doing, so once that’s done I’m hoping I’ll have some more brain space 😊

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          • Best wishes for the essay writing! I’m glad you are OK. I am still catching up with some of your recommendations but will look forward to your reviews once you resume. I’d only just appreciated that you only review books you like. No wonder I add so many of yours to my list! And even more well done for last month!

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  5. Not a book I’ve come across before, but you’re making a very strong case for it! I’m not reading much in the way of new fiction right now (too many older books on the TBR), but I’ll keep it in mind for the future. 🙂

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