‘It was a deflating experience’: the novelists who nearly gave up | Books | The Guardian

The 2022 publication of A Hunger, Ross Raisin's fourth novel, was his "lowest moment", the 45-year-old author says. "It was a deflating experience."

The book received positive reviews, but then Raisin found out it wouldn't be stocked in a large high-street book chain, and literary festivals claimed they "didn't have space" to programme him. "I had to work hard not to succumb to a negativity that in turn thwarts creativity," he says. It made him consider giving up writing altogether.

Raisin received "a really sizable advance" for his 2008 debut God's Own Country, which won him the Sunday Times young writer of the year award in 2009 and earned him a spot on Granta magazine's 2013 list of best young British novelists. It was an "experience I'd normalised - and then the rest of my career has not been like that", Raisin says. "I think my books have got better, but the noise around anything I write has diminished."