He recalls attending an Arsenal match one afternoon in April, 1989 as news drifted into the stadium of trouble at another match in Sheffield. I knew even less about its dark side, a subject about which Hornby writes movingly. When I picked up the book I knew little about the culture of English soccer, its clubs and its supporters. One of its charms is the way Hornby weaves his own personal story with the recent history of the game and of Britain itself. Most of them had played and watched soccer their entire lives and I needed to understand what the hell they were talking about.įever Pitch was part of my education. My forgiving teammates became weekend companions in a city where I had few friends. I was still a relative newcomer to Toronto and accidentally found myself playing, incompetently, on a soccer team in a men's league. I discovered the book nearly a decade after it was published. It was, Hornby writes, 'the fulfillment of a pitiful 20-year ambition, and it's no use trying to dress it up as logic.' Fever Pitch came out a few years later, in 1992, winning a prize for sportswriting and providing a launchpad for Hornby's career as a novelist and screenwriter ( High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good and others). When he reaches his early-30s, Hornby quits his job as a teacher, tries to make a go of it as a writer, and decides to move to a home near the stadium.

His university years bring love and a serious relationship – marked by the momentous decision to take a girlfriend to Highbury for the first time.

His early days at the University of Cambridge are made easier when Hornby finds a group of fellow obsessives (and falls for yet another team, Cambridge United, in the minor leagues of English soccer). When young Nick catches the soccer bug after attending exactly one game, Highbury, then the home stadium of the Arsenal Football Club, becomes that place.Īs the boy grows into a man, soccer – 'my childhood comforter, my security blanket' – is a constant companion on the march into adulthood. Hornby lived with his mother, so father and son needed a place to be together during weekend visits. The catalyst was his parents' separation. In 1968, at 11 years old, Hornby went from being uninterested in the sport to being consumed by it, in that way kids of that age do. '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 with it,' Hornby begins. You'll find it on most lists of the best soccer books ever written, though it's not only about soccer. Fever Pitch endures despite Hollywood's attempt to ruin it with a silly rom-com in which Jimmy Fallon plays a Boston Red Sox fan who gets the girl in the end.

Fever pitch book