Episode 4

Synopsis

'Waterline' is Ross Raisin's long-awaited new novel after the success of his prize-winning debut 'God's Own Country'.

'The sun is on his face, and he spots the postie turning in through the gate... He is awake, that's obvious enough, but he has this sense of unrealness. That it's him that's not real. That's aye what it feels like. As if all these goings on around him - the sunshine, the television still quietly on, the post tummelling onto the mat - they are all part of some other life, one that he can see, but he's no a part of.'

After the death of his beloved wife Cathy, ex-Glasgow shipbuilder and union man, Mick Little finds himself struggling. The shipyard's gone and with it his old way of life, and now his wife too. With the ties that bound him to his old life suddenly loosened, he sets about finding a new way to live. And so Mick finds himself starting again, heading south, away from Scotland, but never away from the guilt he feels over Cathy's death.

Tracing Mick's journey from his old life in Glasgow to the harsh, alien world of a hotel kitchen, to the rough streets of London, this is an intensely moving portrait of a life being lived all around us, and a story for our times.

Today: deciding that the only way to survive is to leave the past behind, Mick sets out for London.

'God's Own Country' was nominated for eight major awards, winning the Betty Trask and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year awards.

Reader: Alexander Morton
Abridger: Sally Marmion
Producer: Justine Willett.