God's Own Country - Hardcover

Raisin, Ross

3.48

1,631 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670917346 ISBN 13: 9780670917341

Publisher: Viking, 2008

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'Ramblers. Daft sods in pink and green hats. It wasn't even cold. They moved down the field swing-swaying like a line of drunks, addled with the air and the land, and the smell of manure'

This is the voice of our narrator, Sam Marsdyke, the teenage son of a farmer up on the Yorkshire Moors. He spends his days working the sheep, mending fences, trying to dodge the eye of his brutal, silent father, and most of all, watching the transformation of the farms and villages around him. From the top of the moors he watches the goofy ramblers and the earnest 'towns', the families from York, who are feverishly buying up the farmhouses left empty by bankrupt farmers. And as he watches, one young daughter of a new family catches his eye. As he falls for the young, sophisticated girl from London, she begins to see him as a means to escape. She wants to rebel against her parents and he wants to fulfil the fantasy he harbours about her and so they run away together. But this journey across the moors will take a terrifying menacing turn which, for him, will prove his terrible undoing.

Sam Marsdyke is an unforgettable character at the heart of this extraordinary novel, a novel that is hugely funny, darkly menacing and will resonate long after you have finished the last page.

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Review:

'A compelling, disturbing and often very funny novel'
-- Colm Tόib�n

'A few pages with Marsdyke are unforgettable. Rare are the writers who can create such a funny yet terrifying narrator' -- Financial Times

'Bleak and beautiful ... A richly distinctive narrative voice' -- Independent

'Compelling, remarkable, entirely original. Marsdyke is like no other character in contemporary fiction. Both very funny and very disturbing' -- Guardian

'Controlled, mature and compelling, this is a masterful debut' -- Observer

'Marsdyke's paranoid world is utterly compelling. A wonderfully unique novel' -- Telegraph

Chilling in its effect and convincing in its execution -- J.M. Coetzee

Mature, taut and beautifully written -- The Sunday Times

One of the most eagerly awaited literary debuts of 2008
-- Observer

Utterly frightening and electrifying at once -- Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End

Book Description:

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

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