A book that is simply called Game, it is the cover shot that gives you more of an idea about the content of this book. I had this one sitting on the pile of unread books for a few months and, given the Socceroos change in fortunes under Tony Popovic, this one took precedence over a number of football books in the same pile. I had an idea of what the subject matter was; after all the font on the book cover did resemble the font of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, and I was intrigued to see from which direction this book would take aim. This was surely going to be an attack on FIFA disguised as fiction, perhaps on the way the 2022 world cup was awarded, and I was keen to find out exactly what that was.
I didn’t know anything about the author before I’d finished reading the book; sometimes it is refreshing not to know the background of a writer, so you don’t get preconceptions and ill-conceived suspicions of an author’s leanings. Since reading the book I did a quick delve and the fact that JJ Rose is an academic involved in global politics and a journalist in that field did answer some of my questions. We were already connected on Twitter, by association through our shared publisher, Fair Play Publishing, but his account didn’t give much away about the book.
I was absorbed immediately; the use of familiar names to a football fan of a certain age gave this an air of authenticity. Gascoigne Rush, for example, was a superb name for a character involved in the big business of sport, and the use of the catchy company name Flight left me with little doubt who they were referencing, a global sports brand involved with FIFA and the World Cup. The experiences of the author definitely shone through with the descriptions of the settings, faraway lands described in depth, the succulent, descriptive, almost flowery, phrasing perhaps taking the reader away from using their imagination to build their own idea of each scene.
The main character, Asher Fox, is a likeable soul, and he has a sidekick Windsor who loves a good Shakespeare quote, and there is an elusive love interest Cal who is as mysterious as a lot of the other players who come in and out of the story as we go. The story builds, and gets the reader quite excited for what’s ahead. Getting quite far through the book though, I had the feeling that the story was never getting to the meat of the pie, and I began to worry that what the characters were building would never come to fruition. The premise was a good one though, and had me thinking and preparing for quite a different ending to the one we got.
The changes in setting were swift, the new characters introduced as though you were meant to know who they were already. I did take a few pauses in reading this one, so perhaps I lost track in a few places, or didn’t quite understand the direction it was going. The language used is so over-the-top at times that I needed to look up some words to understand the context. But the mention of a replacement World Cup, more of an FA Cup-style competition, piqued my interest and kept me wanting to read more.
There are some great one-liners in here. “Old mate Alcock, despite his name, sure had balls.” was a good example, and I really appreciated the discussion on what players say to each other as they shake hands at the end of the game. There are scenes straight from other books or movies, and you can’t help thinking of Jason Bourne in some parts of the storyline as the characters jet around the world at a furious pace. The scene at Parkhead where a subtle message is relayed to Asher around the perimiter advertising before a big game was clever, as was the rewriting of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I loved the airport goodbye scene too, the description of someone’s speech as like “prepping for a punchline” and car doors closing “like gunshots” – superb phrases.
Now, I have to be honest at this stage and say that the story didn’t take me where I wanted to go. I was left unfulfilled by what transpired, and expected to learn more about this rival World Cup that was being planned. With the writing so intricate and floral, I couldn’t help thinking that I was being stupid and missing the crux of the story or just not understanding a fictional take on a real event that I didn’t know or recognise somewhere along the line. I felt that I was being made to look dumb or ignorant and that ultimately left me frustrated.
The overly descriptive words used by characters who were meant to have broken English, or English as maybe a third or fourth language, didn’t wash with me. And the number of grammatical errors in the book was astonishing; for someone who writes so eloquently, the incorrect changes in tense, missing words and strange terminology left me scratching my head. Was I reading it incorrectly? Was I the one mistaken? I don’t believe so, and the last line of Page 244 finishing “That’s just poor grammar.” was quite poetic. The changes of tense though, that was really off-putting; having to read and re-read a sentence to understand if it was just me didn’t help the flow.
So, did I enjoy the read? I’d say that yes, I did enjoy the read. The pace of the changes of setting is exciting, the premise of how Asher gets into this crazy world makes you wonder, and there are scenes that would be epic on the big screen. The Hollywood storyline, though, didn’t eventuate despite being teed up beautifully throughout the book. To put it in football terms, it was like a brilliant passing move through the midfield, a square ball to the 30-goal-a-season striker to finish the move, and a total miskick into the crowd leaving the striker on his knees and the crowd in disbelief.
Game, by JJ Rose. I may need to read some more of his work to see if it is just me! I’d also love to hear from someone else who has read this book.
