The latest addition to my website is Ross Raisin‘s God’s Own Country (US: Out Backward). It is a story told by Sam Marsdyke, a solitary eighteen-year old who lives on a farm on the North Yorkshire Moors, with his parents, a grumpy father and an unhappy mother. Sam is a (probably) unreliable narrator. He was asked to leave school aged fifteen, allegedly for attempting to rape a fellow student. His story is that there was mutual consent. However, we know that he has a streak of wilful violence in him. The area is becoming gentrified and Sam falls for one of the new arrivals from London, a fifteen-year old girl called Josephine Reeves. They gradually become closer and, when she has had enough of her parents and wants to run away, it is to Sam that she turns, not least because of Sam’s detailed knowledge of his beloved moors. Raisin tells a good story, even though things do not really get going till they run away. Raisin is one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.