Fever Pitch - Softcover
A brilliant memoir from the beloved, bestselling author of Funny Girl, High Fidelity and About A Boy.
In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that’s before the players even take the field.
Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby’s award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom—its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men’s coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.
In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that’s before the players even take the field.
Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby’s award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom—its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men’s coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
In the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. 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 fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle.
About the Author:
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 humor 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 prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen 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
Nick Hornby is the author of seven internationally bestselling novels (Funny Girl, High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good, A Long Way Down, Slam and Juliet, Naked) and several works of non-fiction including Fever Pitch, Songbook and Ten Years In The Tub. He has written screenplay adaptions of Lynn Barber’s An Education, nominated for an Academy Award, Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn. He lives in London.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherRiverhead Books
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 1573226882
- ISBN 13 9781573226882
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages247
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
US$ 7.56
Shipping:
US$ 4.25
From Canada to U.S.A.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Gollancz, 1992
Hardcover
Viking, 2014
Softcover
Pengui..., 1998
Softcover
Pengui..., 2000
Softcover
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Paperback
Quantity: 7
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Paperback. Publisher overstock, may contain remainder mark on edge. Seller Inventory # 9781573226882B
Buy New
US$ 7.56
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Softcover
Quantity: 16
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Brand New! Not Overstocks or Low Quality Book Club Editions! Direct From the Publisher! We're not a giant, faceless warehouse organization! We're a small town bookstore that loves books and loves it's customers! Buy from Lakeside Books!. Seller Inventory # OTF-S-9781573226882
Buy New
US$ 10.67
Convert currency
Seller Image
Fever Pitch (Paperback or Softback)
Published by
Riverhead Books 3/1/1998
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Paperback or Softback
Quantity: 5
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. Fever Pitch 0.45. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9781573226882
Buy New
US$ 15.43
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fever Pitch Format: Paperback
Published by
Penguin Random House
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Softcover
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 1573226882
Buy New
US$ 12.02
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Paperback
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # 1573226882
Buy New
US$ 16.09
Convert currency
Seller Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Softcover
Quantity: 5
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 537739-n
Buy New
US$ 16.88
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory # 1573226882-2-1
Buy New
US$ 18.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. Seller Inventory # 353-1573226882-new
Buy New
US$ 18.00
Convert currency
Seller Image
Fever Pitch [Soft Cover ]
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Soft Cover
Quantity: 10
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9781573226882
Buy New
US$ 18.05
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fever Pitch
Published by
Riverhead Books
(1998)
ISBN 10: 1573226882
ISBN 13: 9781573226882
New
Softcover
Quantity: 11
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # ABLING22Oct2018170197254
Buy New
US$ 14.44
Convert currency