Jon Ransom won the Polari First Book Prize for his debut, so we can all take for granted that he’s a talented queer writer with a meaningful career ahead of him.
The Gallopers creates an intense, claustrophobic atmosphere. We’re thrown into an unwelcoming rural landscape, always in view of a mysterious cursed field that Eli keeps being drawn back to, a community where everyone is hiding old secrets from each other. There are mysteries to uncover in this unforgiving place, but as a reader I found myself most compelled by the web of clandestine relationships between Eli and two very different men. Will he be able to untangle himself? Ransom shows the reader the events through a mixture of prose and sparse dialogue – as well as other mediums, like a short seeming-playscript about some of the female characters – where we’re not sure how much they are drawn from Eli’s own notes about his life. We’re left to piece the truth together ourselves.
Winner of the Polari Book Prize 2024. 1953. Eli is nineteen years old and lives alongside a cursed field with his strange aunt Dreama. Six months before, his mother disappeared during the North Sea flood. Unsure of his place in the world and of the man he is becoming, Eli is ready to run. Shane Wright is a man with plenty to hide. Caught in a complicated relationship with Eli, Shane is desperate to maintain the double life that he has created for himself. Then Jimmy Smart appears. Jimmy Smart, the mysterious showman who turns the gallopers at the fair. Under his watchful gaze, Eli discovers a world he knows nothing about with rules he cannot understand.
