I’m writing today’s column at New York’s JFK airport, taking advantage of the flight delay to gather together some tattoo goodness for your enjoyment. I’m sitting across from the overpriced but extensive bookstore staring at a Wall Street Journal ad in the display with a middle-aged man sporting half-sleeves and hawking business news. WSJ has obviously caught wind of my Inked Inc. brethren.

Yet, tattoos are not just for corporate raiders. They’ve invaded the chic lit set if JFK’s booksellers are to be believed. Neatly lining the slick backlit cases were The Grave Tattoo and Until I Find You, novels where tattoos still adorn bikers and sailors, not lawyers and investment fund managers. It makes for a better drama.

To paraphrase Jack London, show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with a good story, and modern authors have taken heed. The results allow for more interesting down time than, say, tattoo TV. So, today, I’m offering a rundown of some good reads where needles and ink figure prominently in recent paperbacks.



Until I Find You

While John Irving’s 800-page tattoo tome met with mixed reviews, I’d still recommend picking it up to meet tattoo artists around the world—some fictional, some very real—although do pick up the paperback version. The hardcover made it difficult to pick the book up, never mind put it down. Voluminous hard covers especially do not make for easy bedtime reading; my body became tattooed with red indentation marks wherever I balanced the book.

I eventually did get through Until I Find You and, overall, glad I did. It is not a flawless novel. I agree with The NY Times that the story is devoid of conflict: Everything Jack [the central character] foresees about his future comes true, only better. Nevertheless, I enjoyed taking the trans-continental trip with Jack and his tattoo artist mother in search of his tattoo-addicted church-organist father, especially when the artists they meet in each port are often the real godfathers of the tattoo world, some still living today. Even a couple of today's younger tattoo rock stars appear in the novel, which was a bit disconcerting for me; I'm reading a work of fiction that relays stories of certain men I drink with and pausing to wonder, Would Tin Tin really do that?



The Electric Michelangelo

The Electric Michelangelo is my favorite of this list for it’s vivid imagery and strength of characters—completely befitting a tattoo tale. The central figure in the book is Cyril Parks, an English boy who begins his life in the early 1900s aiding his mother at her seaside hotel (and night-time abortion clinic), and grows into a man through a sadistic apprenticeship with a local tattoo artist, Eliot Riley.

Author Sarah Hall perfectly sets the scene of Cyril’s first look at tattooing and how it changed his life:

Riley mentors--and torments--Cyril pushing him to excel in custom work, personalized tattoo designs that were less common than the standard flash sheets of pre-designed motifs. Cyril does so and becomes the "Electric Michelangelo."

After suffering the deaths of his mother and mentor, Cyril crosses the ocean to the tattoo Mecca of the time, Brooklyn’s Coney Island. There, he mixes with an international cast of tattooers, sideshow performers, sailors and street punks. It is also there where the reader becomes most connected to Cyril as he reflects on the nature of the craft, his impact on the lives of others, and the meaning of his own existence.



The Tattoo Artist

Jil Ciment’s The Tattoo Artist centers around, you guessed it, a tattooist. No shockers here. Yet, the personal journey of one New York woman in the 70s looking back on her self-imposed exile for thirty years on the remote island of Ta'un'uu makes for an engaging read.

How Sara, our heroine, arrived on the island and the journey back home is relayed as a flashback telling the story of her life. She learned the art of tattoo from the island natives--the Michelangelos of the South Seas--who wear full tattooed body suits. She goes on to describe the tribal culture and even makes parallels with her own Jewish background. Eventually, Sara acquires a full tattoo body suit of her own and by her own hand. Her body is her greatest masterpiece as an artist, the author tells us.

Like Irving, Ciment's work met with mixed reviews. The NY Times joked "scan the horizon and clichés wash in on every tide." For me, it's worth the read. I'm a sucker for a heroine with a Moko.



The Grave Tattoo

The buzz among book reviews these days is the release of The Grave Tattoo in paperback. Set in England’s Lake District, author Val McDermid creates a fast paced thriller, which The NY Times Book Review called “as much a literary puzzle as it is a murder mystery” for the novel’s weaving plot twists. At the center of the plot is the discovery of a tattooed body, in a bog, of what could be an 18th century sailor based on the Pacific Island markings seamen received at the time. That kept my attention.

Tales of pirates and poets, bounty and booty (not the SG kind) move the story as the protagonist Jane Gresham tries to prove her theory that the body is that of Fletcher Christian, a mutineer on the H.M.S. Bounty, who made his way back to England, despite his exile, and confided his secrets of the South Seas to William Wordsworth. She believes the poet wrote down the stories and that these forgotten texts still exist locally; however, she’s not the only one who wants to get her hands on them.

Unlike the other stories, tattoos are more a catalyst than central theme of the novel but the idea that dead men still tell tales via tattoos is vastly compelling.


Have a favorite work of tattoo fiction? Let me know in the comments section below.


Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture.