Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Fever Pitch
Book Review: Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby is one of the best football books
Summary: 5 Stars
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby is one of the best football books around. But it is about much more than football, it gives a rare glimpse into the psyche of the British football fan. In his book, football is a metaphor for all aspects of life, romance, family, and career. Hornby¡¦s amusing narratives perfectly encapsulate the unique relationship a football fan has with their favorite team. Even as a Manchester United fan I find it fascinating to read about his obsession with and dedication to Arsenal.At the most superficial level, this book provides a very detail account of Arsenal from the late 60s through the beginning of the 90s, and the increasingly violent behavior by football fans during the late 70s and early 80s, and the negative impact it had on his feelings for the games.
Hornby describes vividly how his life was related to Arsenal's achievements. When Arsenal was doing good, Hornby was doing good. When Arsenal was having an off-season, Hornby fell into depression. It is interesting to observe the development of Hornby's obsession, because it can happen to anyone. With the backdrop of his often witty accounts of Arsenal games, Hornby talks about how his life evolves with his family, his girlfriend, and his students. Football is like a common world language, and Hornby uses it to interact with his students. And watching football with his father was one the highlights of his childhood.
Every game has an analogy in life for the football fan. For Hornby, a tight game ending in defeat is a painful reminder of a break with his girlfriend.
While this obsession with football is almost innate, sometimes Hornby felt immature, especially when he was unable to control his overwhelming passion for the game in front of his students.
In humorous pros Hornby highlights how football and life come together on the pitch and is definitely worthy of reading.
Book Review: Fever Pitch is a Winner
Summary: 5 Stars
Insightful for those of us who are obsessive fans of anything or those like my wife who have to live with us! What makes this book a five-star read is that it is a fan's (or supporter) story, not a team's or a game's story. It's a series of reflections on how an individual connects with stars, other obsessives, family, critics, and the completely rational people that surround him. Hornby's writing is passionate, frank, and hillarious in that order - a great combination for any book.Book Review: Fever Pitch is a novel to which you can relate.
Summary: 4 Stars
Nick Hornby's autobiography about his obsession with the Arsenal football club is poignant and well-written. But most of the best of the book is overshadowed by reviews that call this book "The funniest book of the year!". What makes the book an especially good read is not Hornby's nostalgic, humorous story-telling, but his discursions to such various subjects as class, male behavior, and identity. The book is also a great description of what it means to be a fan of any sport anywhere. Even the most avid opposer to football (soccer) can identify with Hornby's description of obsessive fanaticism, especially sports fans. Possibly the best facet of the book, however, is how Hornby's obsession with football acts as an embodiment of all his emotions. Everything revolves around football for Hornby. His loves, passions, sadnesses, and joys are rooted in Arsenal.Book Review: Fever Pitch wasn't just a movie
Summary: 5 Stars
Before the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore/Boston Red Sox romantic comedy of 2005, Colin Firth starred in a soccer (football) film from 1997. That itself was of course based on this novel by Nick Hornby.
You don't have to be an Arsenal fan to enjoy the book, and thankfully you don't even have to be British. Yes, of course there were specific statistical references that went over my head, but the important concepts in the book come through (to be specific: loneliness, and the efforts to fill that void through either family or fanship). So do the many nuggets of truth, especially about youth.
My favorite passage:
"Sport doesn't allow you to dream in the way that writing or acting or painting or middle-management does: I knew when I was eleven that I would never play for Arsenal. Eleven is too young to know something as awful as that." p.244
Some more of my favorites:
"The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score." p.20
"Of course I feel nostalgic, even if I am longing for a time which never really belonged to us." p.31
"After my initial alarm I grew to love the movement, the way I was thrown toward the pitch and suck back again." p.75
"You stand there in the shadowed dark looking down into the light, on to the brilliant lush green and it's as if you are in a cinema watching a film about another and more exotic country." p.185
Book Review: For Fans
Summary: 5 Stars
It seemed as though this book was referenced just about everywhere this summer during the World Cup (at least by the more literate columnists), and a long while back, I had loved High Fidelity. I thought it might be worth a read.
And goodness was it. It's a little difficult to explain why. The many essays and reflections within the book are largely uncategorized. These are just things that happened, things Hornby has thought and experienced in his years as an Arsenal fan, assembled in a thematically random order. If you read it, you won't close the book thinking that there was a point to it.
And yet, I enjoyed every minute of the book. I am a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, despite growing up in Texas, simply because I watched a game one day on WGN when the Cubs were on instead of Rescue Rangers, and my experience at each point in Fever Pitch was, "Yep, that's what it's like." Fever Pitch describes the joy, the anger, the irrationality, the pity, the confidence, the awe, the sense of belonging, the despair (etc.) that devotion to a sports team inspires. He captures it all, and it's funny and sad and, most of all, truthful.