Fever Pitch

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

but I am astounded by what Nick Hornby has achieved here...I am a football fan every 4 years since 1982 when I read about the world cup for the first time...I naturally became a Brazil fan but I was not obsessed with football in any sense of the term except during those 4 to 7 matches Brazil would play every four years.

So, this book is not for football fans, it is for everyone. You dont need to know who played for Arsenal in 1972, but you can glimpse a real life experiencing those football matches...that is really what this book is about. It is about growing up and about life.

Secondly, it is hilariously funny and beautiful. I laugh out loud and feel sad simultaneously when I am reading this. I dont know why.

Read it. You will treasure it.

Hornby's novel has a timeless feel to it. Even though it captures key moments from his coming-of-age and experiences supporting Arsenal, the story could be about any supporter supporting any club. There is something about the novel that makes the reader feel that this novel will probably be relevant for years to come as football supporters in the future will likely experience the same emotions that Hornby describes. Further, the novel is able to describe the life and mentality of a football supporter, a passion and dedication that is universal regardless of place and time (since the invention and mass marketing of the game, at least).
If you are a football supporter, you will be able to relate to Hornby's book. If you know of someone who loves his/her football and lives for it, you will be able to see bits of your friend/relative through Hornby. Even if you do not know of football or care for it, Hornby's novel is a good read that will encapsulate you. Just don't let it make an Arsenal supporter of you!

Brillant book... Almost wet my pants a few times. I relate a million percent to the obsession...

Its football... Its my life... And I am American...

Nick Hornby's warm autobiographical book deals with his life as a football fan from 1968 (when he was a teenager) until 1992, especifically as he supported his beloved Arsenal during that time. There's some good insights about football culture (for a true football fan, football is not really an entertainment, a concept that is probably hard to understand in the US, where sports are just a part of the entertainment business) as well as football tactics (there are few good passers in the sports, he says, as hard as this might be to believe to outsiders; Liam Brady, one of his favorite players, was that rare player, a great passer). Each of the chapters (so to call them) deals with a particular football match that he remembers during that period. And along football, he also makes comments on his relationships, be it with his family or with girlfriends. What Hornby tells is the story of traditional English football in its last throes, a time when hooliganism ruled, but when it also was a genuine, integral pastime of the English people. When the Premiere League was established (in 1992, the year this book ends), and the megamoney and the huge tv contracts came along, and some clubs (like, say, Arsenal) did not put in the field a single English player, it became more of a commercial business and less of a cultural phenomenon. And while I like football, it's hard not to come out from reading this book with the impression that being a football fan at the level Hornby was is not a colossal waste of time.