I’ve just found Quentin Tarantino’s next movie project once he’s finished with whatever he’s working on right now.* The North Water by Ian McGuire, described by someone on Goodreads as Jack London on steroids, is a hyper violent, grimy, potty-mouth thriller set on a whaling ship and the icy waters of the Arctic Circle. If you ever wanted to know how to eviscerate a bear, gut a seal or flense a whale in graphic detail then this is the book for you. And that’s not to mention the violent murders, rape, anal sores and starvation on the icy tundra.

I was entertained but then I’m a gore hound from way back. It also helped that North Water is a competent, albeit predictable, thriller where our main protagonist, a disgraced surgeon named Sumner, is pitted against the Arctic environment and a savage killer. The books moves at a steady pace and among all the innards and spurts of blood McGuire does a decent job describing the freezing cold environment.

This is a penny dreadful but gussied up with some thematic hand waving concerning loneliness and man’s kill or be killed nature. (And I say “man” deliberately, barely a woman features in the whole novel). It’s enjoyable, if you’re not squeamish, but buggered if I know why the novel’s featured on the Man Booker longlist.

*Or maybe not given he’s said he’s only got two more movies left in him.