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This is a test comment added by Kate Wilson

Hi

I have just started reading the book. As a Yorkshire girl I liked the title God's own country and I was quietly plugging away at it. Then all credibility was blown for me when he said Mum. No self respecting farm lad would call her Mum, it has to be Mam. However I have given the benefit of the doubt and will keep reading. The plot so far seems intersting, he is so awre that he needs to get in to the new family first before other peopel taint thier views of him. Sorry I can't speak intellectually about prose etc. Would love to hear what others think, is worth me reading on?

Sarah - Bretton reading group - Peterborough

According to Wikipedia, Ross Raisin was born and raised in Yorkshire - born in Keighley, schooled in Bradford. But then he went to university in London, worked as a wine bar manager, and then took a postgraduate degree in creative writing at Goldsmith's College. Maybe his Yorkshire dialect was corrupted here. I cannot judge, not hailing from Yorkshire.

There were some words I had to guess, e.g. 'gleg' - alert and quick to respond.

I've only read the first chapter. We enter the world of a disturbed young man, Sam Marsdyke - a farmer's son - who observes a family of 'towns' moving into Turnbull's farm.

I was left wanting to know more.

Sarah, I was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but then was taken to Lancashire as a baby. I remember vaguely how my grandmother spoke. She would say 'snew' for 'snowed', but generally there weren't many dialectal words in my grandparents' family talk and my Father was discouraged at school from using them - he was once told off for using the word 'laking' for 'playing' as in "Who are we laking (at cricket)?" Consequently, I don't recognize the language used by Raisin and could find it annoying e.g.(p.5) "that wasn't one I had the knowing of." But then again, you do begin to hear Sam Marsdyke's voice - rough as the words he uses are uncouth. With a father who drips rabbit blood over the floor and then eats a biscuit, he was never going to be refined! There's violence too in the character and hints of dire things, so yes, I want to read on.

There is a flavour of the old Yorkshire here, but then Yorkshire is a very big county, so it's difficult to pin the dialect down to a time or place (where's Felton?) I notice that there is no direct conversation in this first chapter, so again it's difficult to locate the time. Before the Second World War, certainly, it would have been all 'thee's' and 'thou's'. So when the farmer was looking for his whistle, the wife would be asking "What's tha lookin' fa?" and "It's here tha whistle!" and so on. Raisin is writing for the general public who won't have much of a historical perspective on the language and wouldn't want the whole thing couched in dialect anyway - the normal English is heavily laced as it is. There are words I recognize as a Yorkshire man of course, "fair capped" meaning 'astonished', but then there are others I've never come across e.g "gleg". I've been too much waylaid by the language to take in the plot much - but will read the next chapter.

David Booth

Isn't the author doing whatothers have tried, mixing real dialect with invented words? Shakespeare and Dickens, for example. I find dialogue in dialect slows down my reading, could be good, but slows down the story-line. liked the language play, though.This is a novel,after all,not,not a lesson in linguisics.
Vey good opening chapter.We know we're going somewhere seriously weird.

Christine....

What a tough nut Sam Marsdyke is. And so cynical too. I found it hard to put and age on him. At first I thought he was a bit of the village idiot and probably in his thirties. Then when he talked about his dad, sensing his fear and awe of him, I thought he must be a child. Then he talks about leaving school 3 years ago so must be 17 or 18 ish. I loved his dry observations of the ramblers. I know I will change my mind about him later but right now he has me on his side. I really rather like his take on life. This book has made me smile and rethink my townie values already. I had never really thought before about how country dwellers might view ramblers with such contempt. It really is quite chilling. I am going to find it very hard to keep to a chapter a week. I can feel myself being sucked in already.

Christina Leech

Francis Cameron - 27 april 2009

Right there, on the first two pages, the narrator shows up as a thoroughly nasty anti-social character.

The writing and the character jar against each other. I ask myself 'Could a bog-ignorant little sod (Sam Marsdyke) really be capable of such sustained streams of observation?'

This text does not convince me.

I disagree with this, Francis. This is a re-run of our discussion of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green! Raisin is very clever at setting the narrative to the boy's point of view: we get a mixed-up version of his thoughts and feelings which are so typically self-centred at that age that he often doesn't seem to have contact with reality. He is...would be a normal teenager, if it weren't for the bad parenting - particularly the father, who is a lout. The boy is vulnerable, tender-hearted, bright, but steps over a threshold now and then. There is a brooding sense of catastrophe looming - reminds me of Lenny in 'Of Mice and Men' - if Sam Marsdyke can do that to a chicken, what else will he be capable of ? I keep having to break off reading at the moment, but whenever I come back to the book, I find the compelling narrative voice back in my head - just like Christina. There's some really edgy writing, laid thick with colour. I want to have a closer look at his style next time - just to see why it's so effective... I'm finding I'm reading on quite quickly - maybe a chapter a week will be too slow? What about setting up to page 90 for comments over the Bank Holiday - or will people not have time to read over the holiday? The problem is - we don't want people reading on way ahead and then 'leaking' the end to everyone!!