Ross Raisin

I tore through this book in a few days and highly suspect I will read it again, which tells you that I liked it right off the bat. This was sold to me by my local library's ebook system through a snippet that said "like The Art of Fielding but about the Premiere League." While I don't think that's necessarily 100% true, especially given the difference in length, I think if you liked TAoF (I loved it) you will like this book. A few reasons why:

The writing. It's paced well and Raisin is adept show more at exploring the interior of his characters without things getting clogged up or dry. The book focuses on a couple different characters and, while I don't normally love that, the tone of A Natural keeps things smooth through all the characters. Everyone's given a fair shot in terms of how they're portrayed and nobody feels like the odd person out that you don't want to read about.

The plot. It's a bit infuriating in that you always feel like you're just on the edge of something explosive happening and it's always slipping away, which makes it a bit of a page turner. While I actually would've liked this book to be a bit longer, just to give it some more space to explore characters, I think the ending was pitch perfect. Spoiler alert - it's not super happy or super satisfying, but it's really what the book called for. (That being said, I desperately want a sequel that's like five years in the future, especially for the main character. Oh well.)

The style. In my opinion, the styling of this book is what really made it. It's hard to describe, but the way the book feels to read - both sad and hopeful, constrained and dangerous - is a powerful meta-narrative on the themes of the book (eg sexuality, sport, secrecy, etc.). show less

'brilliantly comic and darkly terrifying', 29 Aug. 2012
By
sally tarbox

This review is from: God's Own Country (Hardcover)
Sam Marsdyke is an outcast in his moorland village since an alleged assault on a girl while at school. He lives a solitary life, helping his violent father on the farm and training his sheepdog pup. Meanwhile the rural community is being 'invaded' by yuppie types; one such family buys up a neighbouring property and Sam strikes up a friendship with their daughter...
Narrated show more by Sam, the dialect put me in mind of the language used by the youths in 'Clockwork Orange': 'they were rooted to their seats, shuffling about in dafflement'; 'he glegged at his charver but he didn't know what to do neither'; 'some feckless trunklement no one would ever buy'.

I was absolutely riveted from page 1, when in a hilarious episode Sam, out on his wanderings, encounters some despised ramblers. And although described as showing 'unredeemable delinquency', I found it impossible to dislike Sam, whose affection for his dog and intelligence were in stark contrast to the immature and self-obsessed neighbour's daughter.. show less

Do not let the fact that this is a novel about football put you off reading it. It is much more than that, it is an absolutely riveting book about people that imagines the progress of a fictional League Two club over two seasons. Initially centred around Tom, a 19 year old who has been released by a Premier League team and who then struggles to make an impact at Town. The novel gradually expands to other players, their hopes, pressures and fears for their future with successes or injuries or show more lack of contracts or new signings and what these may mean for their future. It also examines the team atmosphere, the rituals and bonding, the small cruelties and the effects that this has on the players and staff. At the same time, Tom is trying to understand and keep secret his gay choices in a very masculine environment where they are heavily mocked. All these factors are vividly described in the lows and highs of a very competitive environment, not only between the teams, but also between the individuals that make up the team. show less

A funny, poignant, but ultimately twisted tale about a young farmer's son from the North Yorkshire moors who forges an unnatural friendship with a schoolgirl. To begin with, Sam Marsdyke, who narrates in a broad Yorkshire dialect full of words like 'gradely' and 'blatherskite', comes across as a bit of a modern day Heathcliff, abused and misunderstood. His father is bad-tempered, his mother has distanced herself from him, and all Sam has is nature - the farm animals and the wild moors - and show more his young sheepdog pup, Sal. So when Jo, the fifteen year old daughter of the 'townies' who buy a neighbouring farm, starts talking to him, and showing an interest in the workings of the farm, the reader almost feels glad for Sam. There are warning signs from the start - the incident at school, and taking revenge on a neighbour for imagined gossip - but perhaps Sam deserves a chance to prove himself. Is he lonely and frustrated, or angry and dangerous? The truth is like a betrayal of the reader's trust, and suddenly Sam is no longer merely quirky and awkward, with a droll line in introspection, but a complete stranger.

I enjoyed the narrative voice, which reflects Sam's character - blunt, comical, but also of another time and place. For the most part, he speaks with a plain Yorkshire accent, but Raisin peppers his character's thoughts and dialogue with archaic words and phrases, straight out of Kellett's Yorkshire Dictionary of Dialect, showing how Sam is tied to a dying breed of moortop farmers. He's nineteen, and living in a contemporary world of Wetherspoon's and Heartbeat daytrippers, but he sounds like a rustic character from James Herriott's books: '[the ram] steadied up when he was with the wether - poor castrated sod who kept himself pot-of-one the rest the year waiting for his charver the tup to come and stay, though I didn't know what the bugger it was them two had to talk about'. Some of Sam's observations had me smirking, but the unravelling of his disturbed mind soon sobered me up.

A fascinating novel, but a truly frightening character. show less