A Natural

“This is a bold novel. [Raisin has a] deep and unwavering empathy for others, and an ability to find flashes of beauty in life’s unforgiving ugliness. His language might be spare, but his turn of phrase is strikingly elegant. . . .  The way is lit by his keen perceptions; the novel suggests the frustrations that arise when lived experience fails to align with what was imagined, and analyzes the gap between spectatorship and participation. . . . If Raisin has chosen to focus on that which stifles rather than frees us, he has done so to demonstrate precisely why we need all the things that society and circumstance suppress. . . . The confidence and skill with which he pursues his vision is not just persuasive, it’s powerful.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Raisin’s transporting and acutely observed novel speaks to us all. First-rate.”—Booklist (starred review)

“An intimate picture of life in the lower reaches of professional British football . . . a bold theme . . . is rendered with restraint and sympathy. . . . [A Natural] is a sensitive treatment of very different kinds of solitude and pain.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A worthwhile sports novel with winning characters . . . The author skillfully interweaves both characters’ feelings of isolation, setting up a number of strong reveals with impressive restraint and control.”—Publishers Weekly

“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