Novel
I gobbled up "God's Own Country" by Ross Raisin in three days. It grabbed me from the first page. Of course "God's Own Country" is a term that is frequently used to describe Yorkshire so that is what probably first caught my eye and indeed the novel is set in Yorkshire - mostly on the North York Moors where there are sheep farms, picture postcard towns and villages and incomers from other parts of the country seeking some sort of rural idyll. The central character is also the narrator. He is Sam Marsdyke the nineteen year old son of a poor sheep farmer. What should we make of him? He is a fantasist with a big chip on his shoulder. He seems to spend a lot of his spare time brooding alone upon the moors. Sam is clearly in partial denial about past misdemeanours and his version of events that occur in the novel itself seems unreliable. He is a hard narrator to like or trust. As the novel ends, you wonder what might become of him, suspecting that all will...