Items related to Fever Pitch (BBC MP3 CD Audio)
"Fever Pitch" is the bitter-sweet autobiography which vividly accounts the elation and utter despair of a love affair with a particular football team. A phenomenal bestseller and William Hill Sports Book of the Year, this captures the truth and absurdities of the obsessed Arsenal fan's mind, and whether you are interested in football or not, this is a sophisticated study of masculinity, class, identity, growing up, loyalty, depression and joy.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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
"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
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBBC Audiobooks Ltd
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0754076199
- ISBN 13 9780754076193
- BindingAudio Cassette
- Rating
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