That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz

At once both heart-throbbingly beautiful and deeply contemplative, both deftly sparing and expertly evocative . . . An entrancing, enthralling and enriching read from start to finish - I savoured every moment and morsel of it -- MICHAEL PEDERSEN A novel of quiet elegance and emotional intelligence, great delicacy and deceptive simplicity. It's a story of grief, redemption and an unlikely friendship left me longing for the quick skies and luminous seas of Shetland -- GAVIN FRANCIS Malachy Tallack is working at the very top of his game as a novelist. This lovely book is beautifully put together, with perfect economy - the language is clear, sparse and beautiful, not a word wasted. In quickly but expertly drawn strokes, the story of a life lived unremarkably but no less meaningfully for that, is illustrated with perfect clarity and heartbreaking poignancy. A tiny shining gem of a thing -- KRISTIN INNES As an islander and a songwriter, it seems to me that both, when done well, are about a kind of truth. About finding one correct note after the other. And in this beautiful book, and in Cautious Jack, Malachy Tallack does it for us over and over again. A life portrait that proves each person is an island themselves, surrounded by the notes of the Atlantic -- COLIN MACINTYRE I lingered with each page, sinking into the quiet tenderness of the writing, the spray of sea and wind . . . A soulful, subtle beauty of a book -- KATE MOLLESON A deeply kind and unhurried book, whose quiet affection for the awkward, lonesome Jack and the Shetland home he's never left just sings off the page. A love letter to country music too, and the emotional labour that songs do to keep us afloat and map the arc of our tiny beautiful lives -- KARINE POLWART Praise for The Valley in the Centre of the World: A moving, authentic novel of the Scottish islands in the twenty-first century -- AMY LIPTROT Life-affirming . . . [Tallack] is a careful and precise writer -- ALLAN MASSIE * * Scotsman * * Tallack's concern here is with the push and pull of larger forces - love, grief, guilt, need, the idea of home itself. They're potent themes that could, but rarely do, overshadow characters about which he writes with palpable tenderness . . . A sharp-eyed and evocative painter of place * * Daily Mail * * Lyrical . . . Wonderfully atmospheric and moving * * Sunday Express * *