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Hornby, Nick Fever Pitch ISBN 13: 9780241950197

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9780241950197: Fever Pitch
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Fever Pitch is Nick Hornby's million-copy-selling, award-winnning football classic

'I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring. . . '

For many people watching football is mere entertainment, to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. For Nick Hornby, his devotion to the game has provided one of few constants in a life where the meaningful things - like growing up, leaving home and forming relationships, both parental and romantic - have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal.

Brimming with wit and honesty, Fever Pitch, winner of the William Hill Sports book of the Year, catches perfectly what it really means to be a football fan - and in doing so, what it means to be a man. It sits side the very finest football classics of the last twenty five years, from The Damned United by David Peace to A Life Too Short by Ronald Reng, but it is ultimately a book that defies categorization and can be enjoyed by all.

'A spanking 7-0 away win of a football book. . . inventive, honest, funny, heroic, charming' Jim White, Independent

'Funny, wise and true' Roddy Doyle

'Hornby has put his finger on truths that have been unspoken for generations. Furthermore, he writes beautifully. A damn good read. Buy it' Tom Humphries, Irish Times

Nick Hornby has captivated readers and achieved widespread critical acclaim for his comic, well-observed novels About a Boy, High Fidelity, How to be Good, A Long Way Down (shortlisted for the Whitbread Award), Slam and Juliet, Naked. His two additional works of non-fiction, 31 Songs (shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and The Complete Polysyllabic Spree are also available from Penguin.

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Review:
Fever Pitch is both an autobiography and a footballing bible rolled into one. Nick Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasises that even if a girlfriend "went into labour at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle. Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems." Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humour and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain- soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prison-like conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of police officers waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger
Review:
Whether you are interested in football or not, this is tears-running-down-your-face funny, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest about Hornby s obsession and the state of the game. GQ
"Hornby has established himself... as a maestro of the male confessional. [His] books reveal a fascination with the sheer voodoo of what so often passes for masculinity; the weird ritual facts, the useless objects, the losing clubs and teams." The New Yorker
"Utterly hilarious." Elle
"Fever Pitch transcends the mundane and the sporty to say something about the way we live." The Observer"

"Whether you are interested in football or not, this is tears-running-down-your-face funny, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest about Hornby's obsession and the state of the game." --GQ

"Hornby has established himself... as a maestro of the male confessional. [His] books reveal a fascination with the sheer voodoo of what so often passes for masculinity; the weird ritual facts, the useless objects, the losing clubs and teams." --The New Yorker

"Utterly hilarious." --Elle

"Fever Pitch transcends the mundane and the sporty to say something about the way we live." --The Observer

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  • PublisherPenguin
  • Publication date2010
  • ISBN 10 0241950198
  • ISBN 13 9780241950197
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages256
  • Rating

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781573226882: Fever Pitch

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9781573226882
Publisher: Penguin, 1998
Softcover

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  • 9780575053151: Fever Pitch

    No Imp..., 1993
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  • 9780141395340: Fever Pitch

    Penguin, 2014
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  • 9780140293449: Fever Pitch

    Penguin, 2000
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ISBN 10: 0241950198 ISBN 13: 9780241950197
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: NEUF. fever pitch - Nombre de page(s) : - Poids : 173g - Genre : Non attribué / Foires aux livres. Seller Inventory # N9780241950197

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