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From Barry Hines’s social realism to Nick Hornby’s account of all-consuming fandom, these are books about far more than sport
The football book was once a Christmas staple. No visit from Santa to the Ross household was complete without the Shoot! Annual or the Topical Times Football Book. These photo-based publications, along with the obligatory My Story by a star player, established a lowly perception of football books as either pictorial and aimed at children, or as cliche-ridden as a post-match interview with an impatient manager. But football is a metaphor for life, isn’t it? Surely the perfect vehicle to convey the frailties of human existence?
Writing a novel set against the backdrop of a failing lower-league football club has its obvious dangers. Will it alienate those who don’t like the game? Will it be classed as one of those old-school football books and lumped in with the landfill of ghost-written autobiographies of Premier League wonder boys barely out of their teens? Continue reading...