Fever Pitch By Nick Hornby
By Nick Hornby
Available at
amazon.com
Fever Pitch is Nick Hornby’s hilarious, award-winning memoir about his life as an Arsenal fan. Hornby, the author of the highly acclaimed novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, takes his obsession with the Gunners, and English football in general, to intoxicating levels. He recalls momentous games and larger-than-life footballers with a writer’s eye for detail and a comic’s wit.
Hornby’s goal is to “strike a chord with anyone who has ever found themselves drifting off, in the middle of a working day or a film or a conversation, towards a left-foot volley into a top-right corner ten or fifteen or twenty-five years ago.” In doing so, he reminds us of just how much joy, heartbreak and absurdity we experience as true fans of the game of soccer.
Fever Pitch is also instructive. “For a match to be really, truly memorable,” Hornby writes, “the kind of game that sends you home buzzing inside with the fulfillment of it all, you require as many of the following features as possible:”
1. Goals
2. Outrageously Bad Refereeing Decisions
3. A Noisy Crowd
4. Rain, A Greasy Surface, Etc.
5. Opposition Misses A Penalty
6. Member of Opposition Team Receives A Red Card
7. Some Kind Of Disgraceful Incident (hand of god, etc.)
Who could disagree? We at the Pats Book Club sure don’t. And that’s why we highly recommend Fever Pitch and make it this summer’s Book Club selection.