Jon Ransom is a Cambridge-based, Norfolk-raised writer whose masterly debut The Whale Tattoo last year earned him the Polari first book prize. A raw and gritty novel of gay love, grief and resilience, it focused on Joe Gunner, a working-class young man stalked by visions, revenants and enemies. The narrative flitted between past and present, cut with periodic interludes where a river speaks to Joe, sometimes teasingly, sometimes pugnaciously. The novel swarmed with enigmas but eschewed easy answers: “Way we put meaning on the things that happen to us … We make shit up – to make sense of it.”
Ransom has now written a hypnotic and even more mysterious second novel, The Gallopers. This is a lust-drenched, ache-filled gay love triangle of sorts that gnarls into a sly emotional thriller. The action begins in 1953 Norfolk, shortly after the North Sea flood. The narrator is 19-year-old Eli Stone, whose mother, Eliza, is believed to have been washed away. Eli lives with his aunt Dreama next to a cursed piece of land that exerts an uncanny force on them, and keeps the townspeople at a superstitious distance. When the flood came, “water rushed across the county displacing everything”, save their field. Eli is enthralled with Jimmy Smart, the handsome and obliging fairground worker who rooms up at their barn. One night, not long after they first meet, Eli finds himself masturbating to the sight of the man washing himself off in the open.
