God's Own Country (Out Backward) by Ross Raisin

I finished God's Own Country (released as Out Backward in the U.S.) a few days ago, but I've been struggling to find a good way to convey the sense of it to you without revealing too much and spoiling the read. So forgive me if I go too far, but this book warrants some serious discussion.

God's Own Country is told through the voice of Sam Marsdyke, a late-teen son of a Yorkshire sheep farmer. From the opening, we find Sam filling his days with a few chores about the farm and seemingly endless rambling over the moors. We learn that Sam was expelled from school after accusations that he sexually assaulted a fellow student, and come to see how this incident has created a sense of isolation for Sam. While Sam views it all as a misunderstanding, he remains convinced that neighbors and folks in town are unable to see him as anything but a sexual predator. His parents, seemingly conflicted about how their son has developed, are distant to Sam.

The North York Moors are telling setting for this novel. Sam is bothy physically and emotionally isolated from those around him. This leads to much of the novel taking place inside his head. We learn about neighbors through what Sam thinks they're saying about him. Entire scenes can be often-humorous, always-paranoid tales in which he imagines interaction that generally gives him the upper hand. In practice, Sam usually fumbles when physically confronted by others, for they always seem to deviate from the previously imagined script, leaving him at a loss to respond. Reality not withstanding, we're influenced, much as he is, by Sam's perception of things and the imagined encounters. For this reason, we remain sympathetic, despite some increasingly dark behavior.

Enter Josephine Reeves, a 15-year old girl who moves into a house adjacent to the Marsdyke farm. From the start, Sam shows profound interest in Josephine. His active imagination increasingly focuses on what he'll next say to her, what others might be telling her about him, and brings him to engage in questionable surveillance of her family. Sam becomes emotionally possessive of Josephine, and even goes so far as to make a failed attempt to attack a rival. The attachment is a peculiar one, and I was never quite clear on what was motivating Sam to seek out Josephine. We're privy to his thoughts, and they certainly weren't effusive anxiety of love of infatuation, though the outward behavior suggested as much.

The book really heats up when Josephine confesses to Sam that she wants to run away from home. She wants Sam to accompany her, and while I wish I could tell you more, it wouldn't be fair to go beyond this point. Suffice it to say that Sam's ability to distinguish between his psychological reality and the general one is put to the test.

Since Raisin tells the story through Sam, he makes ample use of the Yorkshire dialect. I have no prior experience with this, but didn't find the usage intrusive. Poorly used dialect can feel unnatural, but Raisin employs it convincingly. Random words prove initially puzzling, but most terms are easily understood in context.

God's Own Country is one of the best books I've read in awhile. It's gripping, speaks to an unpleasant part of our common humanity, and exhibits masterful writing. I can't wait for more writing from Raisin!

Countdown Challenge

Below is the most recent update to my list of books read for the Countdown Challenge. I'll create a permanent link for this post in the coming days, and you all can check in to see how I'm doing. (The occasional guilt-inducing comment might be appreciated if you notice that I've stalled!)

Books of 2009

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Books of 2008

1. The End: A Novel by Salvatore Scibona
2. Out Backward by Ross Raisin
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Books of 2007

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Books of 2006

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Books of 2005

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Books of 2004

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
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Books of 2003

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Books of 2002

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Books of 2001

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Joining the Countdown Challenge

Prowling around on other blogs in the past few weeks, I discovered links to numerous book challenges. For those of you who haven't encountered this before, a book challenge is a series of rules requiring you to read a certain number of books (short stories, poems, whatever) with a particular theme in a specified time period. It's for your own amusement, but the structure it provides can give just enough motivation to get the reading done.

For example, I have decided that I will join the Countdown Challenge. The goal behind this challenge is to read 45 books by September 9, 2009. The trick of it is that you have to read 9 books published in 2009, 8 books from 2008, and so on. It's a fun way to challenge myself to read more, and since I have been favoring recent works anyway, I've decided to jump on it. In the coming weeks and months, I'll keep you updated on my progress and will probably create a grid to post on here as a record. It should be a good time!

Before finding out anything about book challenges, I had been planning to read a presidential biography for all 43 in chronological order. Lo and behold, I found the U.S. Presidents Reading Project. I plan to dedicate myself to that one, as well. Unfortunately, I've suggested presidential biographies to many people as gift ideas for Christmas, so I'll have to sit tight for a month to avoid duplicates. That's the only thing I dislike about getting books as gifts for holidays: I have to wait until the holiday to get them. Patience is a virtue I've never acquired.

So yes, I'm looking for new presidential biographies in 2009. I need at least 9 of them, and for the first 10-15 presidents, really. Any biographers out there taking requests?

Scibona and Amazon Acquisitions

My wife and I have recently sought to increase our reading credentials by actually budgeting a certain amount each month for new book acquisition. This is generously funded by DirecTV who will no longer be getting their monthly donation. It's amazing how important the death of the television was to get us started reading, and how effortless it has become to read more without the hypnotic blue flicker.

In any event, I was dead set on getting my hands on God's Own Country by Ross Raisin. I had read about it at dovegreyreader scribbles, and was sorely disappointed to find out it wasn't yet available in the United States. Little did I know, and I'm sharing it with you now, customers of amazon.com can order books through amazon.co.uk with their existing amazon account! The price was in the normal range after the currency exchange, the credit card charged less than a dollar in exchange fees, and the shipping was 2-3 days. Presto! As you can see to the left, I now have the book in hand. (Before making any large purchases of your own, I advise you to check with your credit card company about exchange fees. I've heard some harrowing tales.) After that effort, though, I learned the book has been released under a different title, Out Backward, stateside. Still a great tidbit of information, though!

While waiting for what felt like my illicit acquistion of international literature, I pilfered the wife's recent acquisitions and ended up reading The End by Salvatore Scibona. It's Scibona's first novel, and an authentically applied sticker tells me it was a National Book Award finalist. Not hard to see why, really. The book was a quick read and rarely provided a stopping point at which I was satisfied to take a break. Following the crossing paths of 3 generations of Italian immigrants, the story zig zags through time relaying parallel stories about the various characters.

Scibona deals heavily with questions of character and destiny. It seems to me that he's suggesting the two are not inextricably linked. All of his prominent characters exhibit dramatic, conflicting stages in their lives in which their character is undermined, thrown off, and a new direction is chosen. Mrs. Marini, an old woman who ties many of the otherwise unrelated characters together, reflects on her pivotal changes as "a swerve." Like the swerve Lucretius used to describe the origin of the universe in On the Nature of Things, it's unclear what gives rise to this aberration that sets of a chain of events in personality (a traditionally intellectual and snooty interpretation is that this swerve is the inclusion of free will by Lucretius), but something seems familiar and right about Scibona's presentation of the human experience. Each phase of life provides us with the opportunity for a new direction born from the ashes of the previous.

On a lighter note, The End is set in Ohio, and makes frequent reference to my hometown. Not often that an almost-prize-winning novel find its way to Ashtabula. One can't help but wonder if a more glamorous town might have secured the prize for Scibona...