{"id":1453,"date":"2009-02-01T19:44:50","date_gmt":"2009-02-01T18:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcrrview.web.its.manchester.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=313"},"modified":"2016-01-23T21:49:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T20:49:33","slug":"ross-raisin-gods-own-country-penguin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1453","title":{"rendered":"Ross Raisin, God’s Own Country<\/em> (Penguin)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ross Raisin\u2019s debut novel takes its title from the not always ironic way that Yorkshiremen of a certain age refer to their own county. Set in the wilderness of the North Yorks Moors and narrated by Sam Marsden, a nineteen-year-old whose reliability we are never entirely certain of, it combines elements of comedy, suspense and teenage angst to impressive effect.<\/p>\n

Sam, we soon learn, is nineteen-years-old but was forced out of school at the age of fifteen for the attempted rape of a younger girl. (Sam initially says the girl was willing, but this immediately suspicious assertion grows more questionable as the novel progresses). Since the incident, he\u2019s had no other choice than to live and work on his parents\u2019 farm, ostracised by the local people and reduced to a helpless bystander as the countryside is gradually colonised by \u2018towns\u2019, downsizers from the South who\u2019ve come to the area because Devon and the Yorkshire Dales are already overrun.<\/p>\n

Lonely and bored, Sam is reduced to playing tricks on ramblers and inventing richly comic conversations with everything from sheep to seagulls. Then a family of towns moves into the neighbouring farm and he strikes up a strange, halting friendship with the family\u2019s fifteen-year-old daughter, Jo. Jo is an archetypal teenage rebel, horrified by her parents\u2019 decision to abandon Muswell Hill for this rough countryside devoid of civilisation. At first, Sam seems no match for her urban sophistication, and reading between the lines, we see make the most of his attraction to her as she manipulates him for the purposes of her rebellion against her parents. However, when Jo decides to run away from home and asks Sam to accompany her, the power relationships shift until what was fun is incredibly dangerous.<\/p>\n

In Sam\u2019s use of Yorkshire dialect, Raisin novel pulls off the same trick as Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange<\/em> or Russell Hoban in Riddley Walker<\/em> of placing us in a world that is linguistically strange but which rapidly becomes familiar. Although there is an occasional moment when Raisin\u2019s ear fails him, overall it\u2019s a stunning act of vocalisation, and has the added effect of slowly drawing us into Sam\u2019s world and making sure that we sympathise with him rather than the towns or his exhausted and uncomprehending parents. Raisin shows us that Sam \u2013 bored, feckless and with a nasty streak of violence running through him \u2013 is a more accurate reflection of life in the North Yorks Moors than Heartbeat<\/em>, whose fans flock there in tourist buses and are constantly disappointed by the failure of reality to live up to TV.<\/p>\n

A compelling read from its opening chapter, God\u2019s Own Country<\/em> leads the reader forwards with an increasingly appalling sense of moral discomfort. And then it fails to deliver. The ending of the main narrative is surprising, but only in that a book so unflinchingly written and observed should lose its grip on reality in order to deliver a happy ending far more suited to Heartbeat<\/em> than itself. It\u2019s as if Raisin loved creating his protagonist so much that in the end he couldn\u2019t bring himself to damn him. The disappointment this leaves is further compounded by a baffling final chapter narrated from prison that, in its contrived menace, reads like a parody of a Hollywood voiceover; it promises a potential sequel, but fails to be truly sinister.<\/p>\n

Yet this dissatisfaction only strikes the reader because everything that has come before has been so enthralling, and the impressiveness of Sam\u2019s voice and Raisin’s control of atmosphere easily outweighs any sense of disappointment. With his first novel, Raisin has shown a deft manipulation of style and language, but it\u2019s to be hoped that, in future novels, he will realise that if it\u2019s worth the effort to create such a convincing voice\/character, the ending should be true to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ross Raisin\u2019s debut novel takes its title from the not always ironic way that Yorkshiremen of a certain age refer to their own county. Set in the wilderness of the North Yorks Moors and narrated by Sam Marsden, a nineteen-year-old whose reliability we are never entirely certain of, it combines elements of comedy, suspense and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nRoss Raisin, God's Own Country (Penguin) - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1453\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ross Raisin, God's Own Country (Penguin) - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ross Raisin\u2019s debut novel takes its title from the not always ironic way that Yorkshiremen of a certain age refer to their own county. 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