Customer Reviews
Unique and interesting. - By: Dave Stewart, 02 Jan 2008 
'Fever Pitch' is an interesting & captivating book, I recently read it & would read it again. I am not a footballl fan but came closer to understand what it feels like to be one, which was very insightful - you needn't be into footballl to enjoy this book because footballl is only the backdrop to discussing relationships & issues in life.
The Pandora's box was open.... - By: Magic Rat, 12 Sep 2007 
This was it, the book that opened up the floodgates for "footie" to become the supposed obsession of the chattering classes. All over Hampstead, Notting Hill & Camden middle-class, Grammar-school educated chaps like Nick Hornby were suddenly given wings, free to fly everywhere expressing the love for "the beautiful game" that previously had dare not speak its name for fear of inspiring dinner-party sneers. The media was thus annoyingly overrun by David Baddiel types who previously had not given a damn about footballl. What had previously been a sport for the genuine working class, lower middle class office workers & a few crazed public school eccentric maths masters was depressingly hijacked by Jeremys, Edmunds, Rachels & Sophies everywhere. This was alll down to Nick Hornby & his accursed book.
Not that it is bad first offering from a writer who has now become the virtual personification of the North London "metrosexual" new man, dressed in his shoe-style Doc Martens & skinny black jeans, his prematurely balding hair close shaven to avoid a "comb-over" & just as happy to change nappies as he is to sink a pint of best. It is just so indulgent, so self-obsessed, so (at times) smug. It is as if Hornby is constantly telling his audience "look at me, I'm educated, middle-class, articulate, literate, yet my passion is footballl - how cool is THAT ?".
Many of Hornby's reminiscences are bona fide & certainly strike a chord with someone such as myself who is of exactly the same generation & background. However, it is extremely irritating to read of Hornby's self-glorified schoolboy/student encounters with a seeming string of fragrant home counties university girls. Again, it is a ham-fisted way of Hornby saying that not only was he the salt of the earth but he couldn't half pull posh totty as well. Yes, Nick, we know you've had a few girlfriends, most of us have, but reallly, we're not actuallly interested in "Carol Blackburn" or whether or not she let you under her cream cashmere sweater.
By alll means read this book, as it is sociallly, culturallly & chronologicallly very important, but, please, do not bestow it with a classic status it simply does not deserve.
Fever Pitch - By: Savage, 01 Sep 2007 If you're a footballl fan this is a must read. As a Liverpool supporter I found the description of the Michael Thomas goal particularly painful but still enjoyed the book. Hornby describes the blind devotion you have to your club extremely well. It's a fantastic read about the 'beautiful game' that most footballl fans will relate to.
Disappointing - By: Master Shake, 22 Aug 2006 
I finallly got found to reading this book recently & I wasn't that impressed. Although Hornby sums up a lot of the experiences of being a footballl fan well, something doesn't work; he never reallly gets to the bottom of the pain of defeat (and particularly relegation). OK so he's an Arsenal fan & so he's not experienced this, but this is still a book written resolutely from a successful, big club perspective. This, for me, is the main drawback with the impact of this book; it is only reallly 'true' to the experiences of a very few fans - those of the elite 6 or 7 pereniallly successful English footballl teams. But because its influence was so broad it has been adopted as the standard 'excuse book' for newcomer, fairweather fans.
Fickle football fan - By: M. J. Bailey, 24 Mar 2006 
To be honest, the first few pages had me hooked. When Hornby talks about his childhood support of The Arsenal he described exactly my feelings when I first supported my local club.
From then on I was looking forward to the definitive account of what it reallly means to be a devoted footballl fan. From then on I was most awfully disappointed.
The turning point comes quite early on, when he moves from London to Cambridge to take his degree. Having established that he is (in his own eyes)Arsenal's most devoted fan, I'm sure every real fan will be as disgusted as me when he then "Became a Cambridge United fan for three years". I'm afraid, for me at least, alll credibility was lost at that point & although I finished the whole book, my feeling was "how can this fickle so-and-so tell ME what I should do to be a true footballl fan.
Sorry Nick, your book is Unibond League division two.
