Ross Raisin
First Sentence: A few drivers had slowed to look up at the side of the coach as it circled the roundabout.
Back of the book:
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 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.
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.
* *
Last Sentence: Amid the whirl of noise and movement he looked up at the black sky and let out a scream which he was unable to hear and which did not stop, but kept on coming, emitting from him until his throat burned and it became no more than a dry howl, tears running down his face as his teammates were upon his back and he crumpled to the earth.
Advertisements Share:
