A Natural - Softcover

Ross Raisin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784702781 ISBN 13: 9781784702786

Publisher: Vintage, 2018

Synopsis

Tom has always known exactly the person he is going to be. A successful footballer. A man others look up to. Now, though, the bright future he imagined for himself is threatened.

The Premier League academy of his boyhood has let him go. At nineteen, Tom finds himself playing for a tiny club in a town he has never heard of. But as he navigates his isolation and his desperate need for recognition, a sudden and thrilling encounter offers him the promise of an escape, and Tom is forced to question whether he can reconcile his supressed desires with his dreams of success.

Leah, the captain's wife, has almost forgotten the dreams she once held, for her career, her marriage. Moving again, as her husband is transferred from club to club, she is lost, disillusioned with where life has taken her.

A Natural delves into the heart of a professional football club: the pressure, the loneliness, the threat of scandal, the fragility of the body and the struggle, on and off the pitch, with conforming to the person that everybody else expects you to be.

'The pantheon of top-class soccer novelists has never been large, but with A Natural Ross Raisin can immediately be ushered into the Premier League executive box' TLS

About this title

About the Author

Ross Raisin's first novel, God's Own Country, was published in 2008 and was shortlisted for nine literary awards, including the Guardian First Book Award. In 2009 he was named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. In 2013 he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. He lives in London.

Review

Praise from the U.K. for Ross Raisin and A Natural

“A layered and subtle exploration of masculinity, fear and desire, A Natural is as good a novel as I’ve read in years. The poignancy of Ross Raisin’s characters is equalled only by the brilliance of his writing.”—John Boyne

“A Natural is a brilliant, deft, and moving coming-of-age novel about the nature of masculinity and sexuality set against the backdrop of sport. Sensitively and beautifully drawn, it confirms Ross Raisin as a superb writer.”—Carol Ann Duffy

“Admirable . . . genius . . . amazing . . . vertiginous.”—The Sunday Times

“Not since Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain has there been a better portrayal of a conflicted male sexuality.”—The Guardian 

“A powerful evocation of repressed emotion—The Remains of the Day as told by Match of the Day.”—The Daily Telegraph

“Supremely accomplished and moving . . . a masterful performance . . . This is a gripping, mature, important novel. It would be a travesty if it doesn’t win prizes.”—The Observer

“A believable glimpse into a closed world, from a writer whose outlook is formidably open.”—Esquire

“Most novels about football aren’t really about football. . . . They tend to avoid describing the game itself, with its strange mixture of pelting energy and exquisite boredom. Instead they shunt it into the background or repackage it as a metaphor, allowing the simple whacking of a ball into the net to be used as a way of writing about far less tangible goals. . . . Ross Raisin’s latest novel is refreshingly different. Following the fortunes of two lower-league footballers, it is a bold attempt to capture sport in the raw. . . . Pitch-perfect.”—The Times

“Ross Raisin has done his homework so well that I spent much of the novel wondering which club had let him inside the changing-room for a season. . . . This may be the most naturalistic rendering of professional football in British fiction since Brian Glanville’s 1971 children’s novelGoalkeepers Are Different.”—Financial Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784702781
• ISBN 13: 9781784702786
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352