Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Fever Pitch
Book Review: Be warned! This book is not as accessible as his later work
Summary: 2 Stars
Just a quick, simple warning to potential buyers who liked "High Fidelity" and/or "About A Boy": "Fever Pitch" is not quite in the same vein. It's a fine book on footie--and is the perfect gift for any Arsenal fan--but the book should more accurately be titled "Literary Journal of an Arsenal Fan." Each mini-chapter is catalogued by a specific Arsenal match (score, date, and pitch), and although there're some autobiographical vignettes about life/love, these are few and far between amidst pages and pages of discussion about Arsenal -- the team, its players, its matches, its history. In short, and I submit this review only to distinguish this book from Hornby's later stuff (and because I saw it being touted on the Amazon splashpage): "Fever Pitch" is not fiction, and there's not much of a plot. And unless you're already a moderate football fan, you're gonna' be bored and disappointed.Book Review: Best book yet about being a fan.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book perfectly captures the love-hate relationshipthe between a fan and his team. A great introduction to English football, though an interest in football is not required to love this book. Hilarious!Book Review: Best sports fan book ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Sports fan? You'll like this book.Soccer fan? You'll really live this book.
English soccer fan? You'll love this book.
Arsenal fan? This will be one of your favorite books ever.
I am all of the above. But I am also a fan of good writing. Nick Hornby has proven (with books such as "High Fidelity " and "About a Boy") that he's an excellent writer. In tackling (pun intended) the sport and team he is obsessed with, Hornby is being faithful to the notion that writer's should deal with topics familiar to them.
"Fever Pitch" is a love story. It is about one person's unconditional love for a sports team. There have been other such books before, but none better. Hornby explores the intersecting of love of team (and living and dying with their results) with the annoying business of the "rest of life." Any sport fan will be able not to just relate to the book, but seem themselves in it. Those familiar with English football (soccer to the heathen) will identify all the more.
Sports fans should read this book for a glimpse at how others see us.
Book Review: Beware What This Book Might Do To You
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been meaning to write a review of this book for a long time, but since Nick Hornby reawakened in me many of my childhood sports fan obsessions when I read it for the first time in 1999, I've been too busy. Not only did "Fever Pitch" remind me how irrationally and how much I loved my own hometown team (the heartbreaking Boston Red Sox) but he turned me into a fan of English football and his own Arsenal Gunners to the point where I follow them daily on ESPN's soccernet, LISTEN (!?) to them on internet radio broadcasts and have even gone to two games in London over the past two years. It's sick really, and I suppose it's not the kind of thing Hornby would have wanted when he wrote this quintessential memoir of growing up a soccer fan in England, but I've enjoyed it"Fever Pitch" is an obsessive's tale as much as it is a fan's story, and so should appeal to the same wide audience that enjoys his excellent novels (It was my love for "High Fidelity" that sent me straight to this book). It is a memoir of surprising depth considering how it is organized only by the dates of soccer matches between 1968 and 1991, and it makes perfect sense that Hornby, or any true fan, should see the rest of his life (parents' divorce, his own education, romantic and career trouble) primarily as it relates to the team he spends so much time, money and psychic energy on.
The irony, for me, was finding out after I read "Fever Pitch" for the first time that Arsenal was one of the top teams of the last decade in England, so Hornby at least gets to feel the joy that we Red Sox fans are still waiting for. Sure, we're ecstatic the Pats won the Super Bowl, but our lives will change forever when Boston brings home the World Series. But after "Fever Pitch," I'll remember to laugh like the rest of the world laughs when American sports leagues crown their title-holders "world" champions.
Book Review: Bitingly accurate portrayal
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading this book brought back all the emotions of my youth spent as a football fanatic in England. His story is uncannily similar to my experiences (our paths must have crossed twice at Cambridge Utd's games against Wrexham and Newcastle United) right down to supporting a different team than everyone else at your school and the price you pay for that. Well, ok, there's one big difference between him and me: I support Burnley, a team which has gone rapidly downhill during the time period under discussion! It can also be considered an accurate portrayal of a time gone by. With the advent of the Premier League, all-seater stadia and - thankfully - much diminished hooliganism within England, many of the experiences he describes no longer exist. Great book, very authentic.