Michael Rolls (Picador, 1966)

Dominic Nozahic (@domnozahic)

The best books, I find, are ones that provoke you to dig deeper.  The great thing about great books is that not only will the surface level reading entice you and hold you in its spell, but it also compels you to look further.  Every sentence is re-contextualised by the sentence that follows it, offering a whole new light on the text’s events.

Such is the case with Michael “Mickey” Rolls’ From Street Urchin to Gold Medal.  On the surface it’s an autobiographical account of Rolls’ life, and that in itself offers little by way of intrigue.  Born to an average, well-to-do family, Mickey coasted through the early years of his life.  That is, of course, until he found Time and Fruit, the now universally popular and critically acclaimed sport of kings and queens.  The rest of the autobiography charts his meteoric rise: from his early experiences of the sport (regretfully noting down his 5-a-day explorations in the shed of his back garden; his obvious talent oblivious to his parents) to the legendary status he now holds in the Time and Fruit society.  His hometown is now, somewhat questionably, called Strawberry 515 after his landmark 5th World Championship victory, secured with a 5:15am consumption of strawberries.

But it is what is in between the success that marks this as such an intriguing book.  It is the story of the Great British Hero and the underdog.  This is not simply an account of a man with outstanding talent, it’s a tale of recognising your strengths and overcoming your fears (in a now infamous anecdote, the book recalls how Rolls actually once thought it he was allergic to fruit after he had eaten the pips of an apple).  Rolls’s story transcends sport and there is something for everyone in this rags to relative riches tale.

Rolls is not the only hero of the story.  Time and Fruit has a story to be told here, and its symbolic importance to our society is accessible to the reader throughout.  In many ways it mirrors Rolls’s own mediocrity to magnificence timeline; struggling for attention, funding and credibility after the war years, Rolls’s uncertain adolescent identity on the playground finds a metaphoric double in Time and Fruit’s own journey for acclaim, as mainstream sports such as Football and Chess began to dominate the sporting scenes.  Through the lens of this brilliant book, Time and Fruit stops being a trivial sport, and takes its rightful place as a bastion of overcoming adversity.

These are not the only points of interest here, though, and the book’s scope and breadth as it follows the trials and tribulations of our prodigal son Mickey is laden with excellent stories.  In one of its most gripping passages, Mickey summarises the intensity of his early David versus Goliath rivalry with Trevor St. McGoodbody: “Some people believe Time and Fruit is a matter of life and death… It is much more important than that.”  The book comes alive when Rolls reminisces on his Time and Fruit career, and the result is a truly astounding text.  As I read and reread the final words, I was left to wonder whether there was a better man, a better autobiography and a better sport than Mickey Rolls, From Street Urchin to Gold Medal and Time and Fruit respectively.  As I sit here eating my midnight kiwi, I’m convinced there are not.

Dominic Nozahic is as well-read as he is tall but only half as clever as he is handsome. 

In anticipation of this book, and to placate my impatience at not having it in my possession, I read some reviews and soon noted the many instances where the word ‘detail’ came up (seven, as it happens). I became slightly concerned; perhaps detail was code; political internet shorthand for goes on a bit. Turns out detail, meant … detail. This though is not your garden-variety detail, no, this is deft verbal photography masquerading as detail. And how!

The Promised Land is a land where players wear the tackles of their opponents, astonish free-kicks into the top corner and clueless midfielders tory away their chances when through on goal. Daniel Harris is not concerned with perfunctory documentation – simply re-counting and re-imagining the treble winning season – he sweeps you along, more than willingly, to re-live it, re-love it and re-remember why it was you loved football in the first place. Every sentence is owned: these words belong together, they’re not shoved in against their will where others would have sufficed, they’re pleased to have been selected, to be telling the story, showing themselves off even. The eloquence hits you with the dexterity of a prize fighter – you’re flat out enjoying it before you even know it.

Followers of Daniel Harris on Twitter will already have noticed that he is a crack shot when it comes to highlighting the affectations of the modern footballer and the book doesn’t disappoint on this score either. It also goes further, taking in the cognitive dissonance presented by modern football fandom adroitly with well selected asides and observations.

This book is so good, it would be easy for me to say that any fan of any club would enjoy it, but I think I’d struggle to read the tale of Liverpool’s not-really-a-treble-treble without desperately hoping to feel a little underwhelmed. However, if you’re a fan of books – and if you’re not, then maybe you need to ask yourself: why not? – then all I can tell you is this: The Promised Land is one of the best books I’ve read and I can’t recommend it enough.

I could introduce this “book review” by recounting the heart-wrenching story behind how I came to own this book and then the equally heartbreaking turn of events that led me to getting round to actually reading it, but I don’t go in much for those type of reviews that are more about the reviewer than the review itself, and besides, that’s all the filling I think necessary to give this post a passable word count.

Autobiographies and biographies, ghost written or not, are my secret favourites. Reader, I read it.

What happens in the book: The football is racist. The football is sexist. The football banter makes you want to eat your own head whole without a dressing or sauce. Shaun Goater – relative to some other footballers – is a person (though surprisingly arrogant).

This was probably my favourite bit:

(On Steve Coppell) On one occasion we were preparing for an away game with Stoke and he said, ‘When you see Ade Akinbiyi racing around and his dreads going all over the place, coupled with the passion and anger in his face, that typifies Stoke. If you can stop those dreads going from side to side and keep their fans from singing “Delilah”, you’re halfway there.’

Sometimes I would look around the dressing room and wonder how many of the lads understood what he was trying to say. Undoubtedly it went over the heads of a lot of them, but I thought this guy was talking some very, very clever stuff. I used to love hearing his half-time talks and observations, because more often than not it was quite profound.

*Spoiler Alert* If you don’t want to know how the story ends, avert your eyes from the title of this book now. Phew – that was a close one!

Many people claim this to be one of the finest football novels ever written. If that’s true (I haven’t read many), then it might be that such a statement says more about the other football novels than about this one in particular. Despite the protestations of the book’s introduction, I’d personally say I very much see this as the ‘comic novel’ it claims not to be; a bit of well written fluff – perfect for young adults. Don’t get me wrong, I really did enjoy the three hours it took me to read, but I wouldn’t go as far as to recommend it to anyone within my peer group.

The narrator of How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A Cup is the club’s secretary, who has been gifted a share of the F.A. Cup prize money in order to create the official history of the football club. We are invited to relive the events with him, as he attempts to recall the key characters and moments as part of his drafting process. The narrator shares gossip and tales from the village (that we are reminded won’t be included in the official history) and so the book becomes more of a loose observation on village life. We never get to really find out too much about the narrator himself, who hints that he’s in the midst of a form of mid-life crisis, and that it’s his ongoing search for a purpose that has ultimately brought him to Steeple Sinderby, but it’s definitely the more well-observed, existential moments from the narrator where the book scores it’s occasional small victories.

The book’s author, J.L. Carr, was an interesting character. He turned his back on what he saw as an obscene literary world, and so, as you’d imagine, there is a strong sense throughout the book of the author’s anti-establishment leanings. Indeed, this is no more prevalent than with regards to the anti-hero of the book – the village vicar’s atheist sister –  who regularly “preaches” a strong anti-capitalist sentiment. This makes me think that if I’d read Steeple Sinderby… when I was a teenager (or perhaps younger) I would have been completely absorbed by it, and would perhaps now look upon it with more reverence. That may sound patronising, but I’m not a proper book reviewer, so I think I can get away with it.

I liked it, but I just wanted a lot more.

Glorious: My World, Football and Me Paul Gascoigne (Simon & Schuster Ltd 2011)

I remember calling my friend Tim Greaves from work while he read the final names for the World Cup ’98 squad off of Ceefax.  He told me I wouldn’t believe who’d been left out. I went through everyone before I got to his name. I have never been able to get my head round why Glenn Hoddle left Gazza out. This book touches on that time very briefly and infact if I had to pick a word that best describes this book then ‘brief’ would be it.

It feels very much like Gazza himself hasn’t come to terms with his life yet, which is no surprise, and is only comfortable sharing, what for the most part is, a summary of the stories we are familiar with from the press. There is nothing of his private life. It’s more of a cheeky two fingers up to those who say he squandered his talent, than the usual ‘My Story’ ghost-written stuff we have come to expect from ex-pros and quite an ‘easy’ read.

Less of an autobiography and more of a ‘looking through a press photo-album while your inner-monologue narrates in the style of a bad impression of Gazza’, but worth a couple of hours of your time, if you’re a fan.

I imagine when he’s ready, the book of his life will be truly glorious, and not all in a good way.

Babysitting George – Celia Walden (Bloomsbury 2011)

I’d heard about Babysitting George when it was the book of the week on Radio 4 (Yes I was in between applying my Fixodent and emptying my bed pan before you ask) and although wasn’t immediately taken by it, after reading a few reviews I decided in the immortal words of Cheryl Kerl on X-Factor that it might be ‘reet up my street’. Having picked it up from the Library I became instantly aware of the dust jacket containing two helpings of over-egged, clichéd, sentimental drivel courtesy of the master of the art, Tony Parsons (Tony Parshole as Viz like to refer to him). This was not a good sign for me.

For those that are unaware the book is the account of journalist Celia Walden’s first ‘big job’, to find George Best and keep him away from the press. It is a real life account of events that start in 2003 when having had a ‘big bust up’ with then wife Alex, George becomes headline news (again) and all the papers want the scoop. George Best at the time is writing a column for Walden’s paper so they want to try and keep all the exclusives for themselves. Having been forced into one and others lives through the circumstances they carve out a relationship of sorts and the book guides us through the period of time they are forced to spend together.

In terms of learning anything new that I didn’t already about George Best from the tabloid press, like a trailer at the cinema that betrays the feature by telling you all you need to know about a film, the inside sleeve ‘blurb’ presents all the main ‘surprises’ that you are about to discover. The book itself instead of taking the form of an emotional personal journal comes across to me as a bland diary of conversation and I’m left wandering how much was left out of the altercations and events rather than how much I’m actually being told. The book claims to ‘question the exploitative nature of tabloid journalism, fame and addiction’. I must have missed that bit.

There are admittedly some interesting versions of events that do present an alternative insight in to some part of how the press functions and how ‘celebrities’ function alongside that, but it’s nothing new. If you’re interested in the kind of salacious gossip the tabloids have spoon fed us about George Best then this does in part offer a ‘different’ angle on it. I read it all and I have to say that I don’t always finish a book if I am not engrossed in it on some level. I didn’t find it emotional, this coming from someone who still fights back tears when Kevin is re-united with his mum in Home Alone.

What the book made me aware of more than anything and what I will take away from having read it, was George Best’s absolute unwavering love of a drink. It was the love of his life. He died, knowing what he was doing (if this book is to be believed) doing what he enjoyed more than anything, drinking. In some ways you could envy that.

N.B. A word of warning to the ill-informed ‘die hards’ who take offence at the term ‘Man U’. It is used in speech in this book at least twice. Now we don’t want any repeat scenes like when Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, so the best advice is to steer clear. Actually, I’m completely forgetting that it’s highly likely you can’t read. By the way, while we’re here … Do you spend all televised games foaming at the mouth because the channels choose to abbreviate us to ‘Man U’ in the score box (or whatever that thing in the top corner is called)?

Cookson, Catherine Rooney (Corgi, 1976)

‘Rooney was a simple man … in a complex situation’ reads the tag line for this novel and Rooney is, essentially, a love story.  At the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to the protagonist of the title as a staid and unambitious individual who, by the end of novel and after overcoming various obstacles and challenges, is reborn through the transformative power of love.

Cookson’s novel opens by referring to the eponymous hero as a Muck Pusher.  However – despite the novel being set in the north of England – rather than aiming some kind of future homophobic insult at the yet-to-be-born Wazza, Cookson is merely employing 1950s slang for ‘bin man’.  It is in part Rooney’s muck pushing which forms the central theme of the novel and characterises the protagonist by placing him firmly in the strict social stratification of South Shields in the 1950s.  This class structure gives Rooney his identity and he is happy to operate within it and even embraces the security that the resultant stasis gives him.  This all changes though when the central plot device of the novel kicks in, that is when he meets ‘the little one’.

Until this point Rooney is a confirmed bachelor, happy with his weekly trip to the dogs, his three pints (and no more) down The Anchor, or his evenings in with his cowboy novels.  His friends at the Corporation all agree he is ‘too cute to be caught’ and we learn that ‘with skill and surprising determination he [has] evaded four widows and two spinsters during the past ten years.’  He is also an orphan, a fact which the reader is encouraged to imbue with meaning as regards his lack of interest in marriage.

Rooney’s safe and routine existence, devoid of attachment begins to unravel when he moves into a room at Ma Howlett’s place.  Here the main tenets on which he has built his life thus far: his class and his deliberate emotional isolation, begin to bifurcate.

Firstly, Ma Howlett lives on Filbert Terrace, a street considered a cut above the usual terraces resided in by dockers and miners, where Rooney took rooms previously.  Rooney describes the difference on his first visit to meet Ma:

“… even the darkness could not hide the difference of this terrace from its immediate neighbours, for jutting from the foot of each tall house was an iron railing encircling a square of ground inside of which could be sensed rather than seen patches of green, broken some places by crazy paving, and even bird baths.”

When moving in with his few treasured possessions, Rooney is immediately reminded of his lowly class ranking and is made to feel inferior by Ma Howlett’s aspirational daughter.  She complains to her mother on seeing his furniture:

“Old rubbish!  That awful bed.  And the whole street watching.  And my wedding so near … If you had to let, why take him?”

Secondly, although Rooney doesn’t realise it himself until quite a lot later in the novel, the reader knows it is love at first sight when he claps eyes on Nellie (who he christens the little one), who also lives in a room at Ma Howlett’s:

“Rooney … found his gaze remaining on her as it had done on Ma.  But it wasn’t her hair that drew him, but her eyes, large brown eyes … He had never seen such large eyes in a woman.”

Rooney becomes increasingly drawn into Ma Howlett’s strange world and by association the plight of the little one, who – it transpires – in a Cinderella-esque pastiche, is a long term victim of Ma’s (her aunt) bullying.  The problems caused by the sudden social mobility resultant of his taking rooms at Ma, together with the difficulties of the little one, serve to feed into each other as the events escalate.  The final result being that Nellie is arrested for suspected theft of an expensive necklace.

Rooney although still not understanding why himself, has been drawn into wanting to help Nellie, but until the point of her arrest has been unable to, as she has managed to fight her own battles with Ma, leaving Rooney feeling useless and emasculated.  The opportunity arises when he has the chance to save her from prison and – you might guess, they all live happily ever after.

Rooney is a must for all joint fans of pulp fiction romances, vague MUFC puns, 1950s class battles and inherent sexism and racism, of which there must at least 5 of you out there.  Buy it now for 90p, or in ‘new money’ £89.99.

Jayne Marshall is the very clever person who did this. She has a blog here: www.bookyish.wordpress.com You should go have a look see. You can also follow her tweets through @Bookyish