A Natural

A Novel

By: Ross Raisin

Narrated by: Shaun Grindell

Tom has always known exactly the person he is going to be. A successful soccer player. 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 suppressed 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.

©2017 Ross Raisin (P)2017 W. F. Howes Ltd

Very difficult to pay attention to

The author tells his story with a lot of descriptions of places and of the menial things the characters are doing. There is very little dialog or action. Settings abruptly change. The narrative is taking place in a bar one second and out on the football pitch the next, leaving the reader to wonder how and when the setting changed. You’ll have to do a lot of rewinding if you buy this audiobook. There are other difficulties. Minor characters are brought back into the alleged narrative by the author simply throwing out a first name, leaving you to wonder, “Wait a minute, who’s that again?” The biggest problem, though, is that nothing happens; it’s just one description of a bland slice of life after another. It’s the audiobook equivalent of torture.