FICTION:
God's
Own Country, By Ross Raisin, Penguin/Viking, 210pp,
£16.99
A PLACE can make a story; a
place can shape a character.
The rugged terrain of the
magnificent Yorkshire Moors, a most savage and inspiring setting,
is all important in Ross Raisin's outstanding debut,
writes
Eileen Battersby.
The landscape is in fact a major character, a brilliant foil to the remarkable narrator whose voice will remain in the memory thanks to the physicality and texture of the earthy, north of England vernacular prose.
Here is a novel worth celebrating - it pulsates with life, truth and the kind of lonely, raging despair that has no choice but to create delusion. Sam Marsdyke is 19 , living with his parents on their hillside sheep farm , and is caught in an exile that is both haven and hell.
Having been expelled from school some three years earlier for an incident involving one of his classmates, a girl, Sam now lives as an outcast, a source of embarrassment for his mother and of shame for his father. As for the locals, well, they call him names and he tends to play up his bad reputation.
When not working with the sheep, Sam, about as able a narrator as you're likely to meet, passes his time annoying the hill walkers, "the ramblers" as he calls them, flicking stones at them. As early as the opening pages, Raisin, the most excitingly original new fiction talent to emerge in Britain since Martin Amis first decided to try his hand at literary satire with The Rachel Papers, is intent on writing about more than one young man's angry solitude. His language is as rich as that of a writer from the US south.
Sam Marsdyke is contentedly tormented and living in two worlds, the one that is taking place all around him, and the other one going on in his head. His fantasies are vivid and often funny and always believable. The narrative is an interior monologue and also an account of how one teenager's act of rebellion effectively seals the downfall of a young man, the narrator, who is already marked by bad timing.
Almost as significant as Sam's woes is the relentless urbanisation of the Yorkshire countryside; Raisin is aware of this, so are his characters. The farmers watch as traditional farm holdings are sold off as dream homes to wealthy newcomers from the cities, who are now intent on paradise. Even the local pub is not safe, as the townies invade, bringing city style and a pastiche notion of what passes for them as "tradition". God's Own Country is about the clash of cultures; the rural versus the urban - "your sheep is blocking my car" announces the blow-in to the farmer's son.
Marsdyke senior is tired, and observes as his fellow farmers sell out to the inevitable. Newcomers complete with a pet Labrador called Lionel have arrived, having purchased a local farm. The couple have a son and a daughter. When the narrator is dispatched with a basket of mushrooms to offer as a welcoming gift, he neglects to inform the family that it is always useful to check for maggots.
The present goes down badly. The mother is furious and Sam quickly names her "Chickenhead" thanks to her hairstyle, but he looks far more favourably upon the daughter. She seems interested in him, but then she is very bored and not too happy at home.
Raisin not only evokes a vivid sense of the countryside, he places his narrator in a real rural world which is also a society, the locals know all about him. "She [ the young girl] would know me before too long. Not me, course, but my history, painted up in all the muckiest colours by some tosspot, gagging to set her against me. A piece of gossip travels fast through a valley. The hills keep it in. It goes from jaw to jaw all the way along till it's common news, true or not . . ."
Sam may be trouble, but he does his chores. He also seems to enjoy nature. When we first meet him most of his pleasure is drawn from watching the farm dog's litter of pups.
In speaking to himself, Sam is also speaking to the reader. But Raisin, aside from one false word, an out of place adjective in the opening paragraph, the jarring use of the word "bright", never makes a wrong move. Sam convinces with every phrase, every movement.
He comments on his world as he sees it, and he also remembers. Convinced that no one will ever forget the misdemeanour that caused him to be expelled, it is obvious that he can't forget it. He is big and brutal, yet also tender and alert to all the signs of life about him on the farm. None of this is ever sentimentalised and unlike many writers who attempt to write in dialect, Raisin ensures that his narrator remains true to his northern dialect and also true to his social class, as well as his wounded soul. This is a literary novel that never becomes either "literary" or forced.
Already regarded as a potential rapist, Sam has no freedom. The young newcomer girl, however, has decided that she is going to befriend him, particularly as she knows this will outrage her parents.
The scenes during which Sam attempts to "learn" the knowing teenage girl about sheep and the lambing are inspired. Raisin has a natural feel for sly humour and he also writes balanced, convincing dialogue. Sam emerges as fully life-sized off the pages; as does his upset when his parents announce that the pups are to be sold. Sal, his favourite, is ignored by the first buyer who comes to the farm, but the second buyer takes her. When Sam mentions this to the girl, she decides to steal her back - and the new owners are townies, known to her parents.
Breaking into the house is not difficult as the townies are under the impression it is still safe to leave keys under a flower pot. The young intruders bring another pup to leave in Sal's place, townies being too stupid to notice the difference.
"They were asleep in a little room full of towels. I went toward Sal and she woke up and looked at me with her head still rested on a towel. I thought I'd be filling my boots, seeing her again, but I wasn't - it felt queer, like she didn't want me to take her, she was happy here carrying slippers, she didn't much fancy going back to sleep in a damp stable and getting kicked for barking at cars. She gave a great yawn as I hunkered down to pick her up, and I marked how heavy she'd got. She was heavier than him we'd kept. Must've been the science diet. If I shook her she'd rattle like a tin of biscuits."
Sam is bright and hurt and angry, But he is also naive, too much of a dreamer and a romantic, aware of the birds "flying back from Africa or somewhere a million miles off . . . fetching up to their old nest . . . Sod knows how they did that - it wasn't like they had an alarm clock to remind them . . ." but not alert to the reality that humans aren't trusting animals.
Friendship soon turns to multiple errors of judgment and a crazy odyssey, leaving Sam to pay for it all.
If literary prizes mean anything, they will be wrapped up in fancy paper and be presented with sighs of gratitude to this rich, full-blooded and vividly voiced account of one lad's life.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times