Product Description

'Powerful, engrossing, extraordinary, sinister, comic. A masterful debut' -- Observer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4318 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
Astonishing, funny, unsettling ... An unforgettable creation [whose] literary forebears include Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Alex from A Clockwork Orange --The Times

Review
One of the outstanding first novels of 2008 ... as the plot takes a sinister turn, Raisin ratchets up the suspense

Review
Compelling ... What makes this novel remarkable is Raisin's creation of an entirely original voice

Customer Reviews

A very impressive debut
The anti-hero of God's Own Country is a fascinating character - very funny and engaging at times but also sadistic and menacing. In fact, the whole book has a air of menace hanging over it, from the gothic moorland setting to the way Sam stalks his prey, both animal and human, as he spends his days roaming the bleak North Yorkshire countryside.

Sam narrates the book and his Yorkshire dialect is rich and colourful, but I didn't find it intrusive or unintelligible - I did have to look up a few words, such as "blatherskite", "powfagged" and "hubbleshoo", but I think it's easy to follow Sam`s train of thought without having to resort to a dictionary. There's also a lot of dark humour in the book, mostly at the expense of the ramblers and rich `towns' who seem to be taking over the village and turning it into a yuppie outpost.

As with all the best unreliable narrators, you're never quite sure whether to believe Sam's version of events, especially as his relationship with the neighbours' girl develops and Sam's past comes back to haunt him.

I was very impressed by this debut novel which seems to have caused a bit of a storm in the publishing world and received a lot of award nominations. Definitely an author to watch out for.

Marsdyke's Game
Gods Own Country was recommended to me by a friend after I had read De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage. I mentioned that while despite not liking the narrator-protagonist in De Niro's Game I found myself continuing to read the book because of his incredibly moving descriptions and poetic interpretations of the world around him. And so I was recommended Gods Own Country.

It's a very different sort of book about a boy Sam Marsdyke who lives an isolated existence on a farm on the edge of the moors. His is a problem of not receiving affection and also of not having anyone to bestow it on. Instead he pours his heart in to the companionship of his dog and the landscape around him. His relationship to the countryside of northern England is so intense and his knowledge of it so intimate, he often comes across as a kind of guardian.

The current and very real gentrification of northern mill-towns and farm-towns becomes a personal attack on Sam. The beauty is that Sam's criticism is not an over-romantic lament for the loss of rural values: he mocks the other villagers heavily when they fight to save a local pub being overtaken by a big company (none of them could stand the place before). Sam doesn't seem concerned with what other people are fighting for though. His allegiance lies entirely with the landscape.

Raisin's book feels very well-researched and there are several poignant glimpses in to rural life, which demonstrate how very differently the Yorkshire coutnryside is experienced by those who visit it (like me and the other 'towns') and those who live and were raised in it (like Sam).

Finally though one can't ignore the fact that Sam Marsdyke is also a deeply disturbed and disturbing individual, and the series of events narrated in God's Own Country are anythig but Emmerdale.

Sympathy with the devil?
I enjoyed this book because the main character, Sam, has a unique but very believable voice that grabbed my attention from the first page and left me wondering, right to the end, what on earth was going to happen to him.

Sam Marsdyke is quite an expert on the Yorshire farm where he lives with his parents, on the surrounding moors and on animals, but his relations with other human beings seem irrevocably doomed. Even his well-intentioned attempts to connect with other people leave him ostracised, and you soon feel that this is a character for whom trouble is simply unavoidable. At the same time, his caustic observations on his neighbours and on ramblers, delivered with fruity Yorkshire idioms, are both arresting and funny. At times I wasn't sure whether to cheer for Sam, feel sorry for him or despair of him. Which made him very real for me, to the point I could almost hear him 'blatherskiting' in my ear.

There's no doubt Sam is a disturbed individual, but it's hard to spend time with him, to see how ridiculous and disturbing the rest of us are from his perspective, and not have any sympathy.