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'24 for 3 contains some of the tightest, cleanest writing I have seen in a long time This is a little marvel. It's funny, clever, illuminating, deeply kind-hearted and it doesn't overstay its welcome. It's not self-indulgent: things happen in it, surprising things, like in an old-fashioned novel, yet it's perfectly contemporary; and every word has been chosen with subtle care.' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 'A gem' Salley Vickers 'Very original I loved it' Mick Jagger 'A lovely little novel 24 for 3 is written with beguiling simplicity, and the small wisdoms it offers up are readily accessible to readers who have never been able to make head or tail of cricket' Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph
Product Description
Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman's attention is torn between her husband's insistence on explaining the rules of cricket, her lover's preference for mystery, and the worrying disappearance of her sixteen-year-old stepson. By Tuesday night the outcome of the match will become clear - but whatever happens, the lives of the players will be changed forever. 24 for 3 is a funny and moving story about love, family, and whether or not one should always play by the rules.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is not really about cricket. The match and the attempt to explain the rules give the story a strong sense of time and place as well as of contrasted ways of seeing events. The summer, the park, the house, and its rooms, and the other room, make boundaries of the ordinary in which things are going on, which threaten to shake apart lives that have grown together. The writing is personal, intimate, yet almost matter-of-fact in an English way. The relationships (the husband and wife, the wife and lover, the mother and son, the au-pair) are shown through activities that are real and intense. You get a strong sense of people living together, but, like the au-pair, from different cultures, operating under different rules. And although it could have been depressing, after all it's about a family breaking up, it is actually humorous, warm and positive. Since in fact it was written by a man, but told by a woman, I wonder if women like it, find it convincing?
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This short book just skips along, throwing surprises at you along the way - smiles in the mind, thoughtful observations, wry questions, vivid pictures. It's written with panache and a lightness of touch that belie the complexity of storytelling. It's no surprise to learn that the author is also a poet - her vision is intense and her language is honed.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In a week which has seen the Aussies humbled at Headingly (somewhere they have been humbled before) and Murali get his 800th wicket with his last ball ball in test cricket, taking the final Indian wicket in a famous Sri Lankan victory at Galle, what serendipity to find a novel, described in the blurb as "...a perfectly crafted, bittersweet and bewiching story about love, family, passion and whether or not one should always play by the rules."
It's the cricket novel with an opening of pefect pitch and length:
"Five days?" (The opening sentence - and indeed paragraph - of a novel which starts on the first Friday of a Test match between England and India.)
The title is original. Thus it is unlike a recently published book which disappointingly turned out to be neither a novel - though appropriating its title from one, with the content showing similarities to a roman-a-clef - nor about cricket: Peter Mandelson's "The Third Man". Mandy turns out to have spent much of his time as an unofficial umpire rather than patrolling the boundary, only occasionally given spells in the bowling attack. And while Milly-Molly has come in for harsh criticism, Jennie Walker's novel won the McKitterick Prize in 2008. The front cover sports a hat-trick of encomia:
"This is a little marvel" - Nicholas Lezard
"Very original. I loved it" - Mick Jagger
"A gem" - Salley Vickers
As a reader whose purchases are often influenced by covers, blurb and testimonials, I can only say - like Greg Wallace about a delicious Masterchef dish: " This is as good as it gets".
The novel has further exceptional qualities. A central character is a randy loss-adjuster who, like the first person narrator, has been attending a conference (but a different one) in Edinburgh: "The loss-adjuster's smile is not sheepish. It's goatish." (p 135). It sneaks in quotations from Chekhov's account of journeying towards Ostrov Sakhalin. On the infolded back blurb there is a final unexpected twist. This novel is a "doosra", as cross-engendered as "Middlemarch", though far shorter: one ball to an over or a Twenty-Twenty afternoon read compared to the five days attention George Eliot demands. Charles Boyle (when he writes for his poetic muse) has hit a perfect cover drive.
It's the cricket novel with an opening of pefect pitch and length:
"Five days?" (The opening sentence - and indeed paragraph - of a novel which starts on the first Friday of a Test match between England and India.)
The title is original. Thus it is unlike a recently published book which disappointingly turned out to be neither a novel - though appropriating its title from one, with the content showing similarities to a roman-a-clef - nor about cricket: Peter Mandelson's "The Third Man". Mandy turns out to have spent much of his time as an unofficial umpire rather than patrolling the boundary, only occasionally given spells in the bowling attack. And while Milly-Molly has come in for harsh criticism, Jennie Walker's novel won the McKitterick Prize in 2008. The front cover sports a hat-trick of encomia:
"This is a little marvel" - Nicholas Lezard
"Very original. I loved it" - Mick Jagger
"A gem" - Salley Vickers
As a reader whose purchases are often influenced by covers, blurb and testimonials, I can only say - like Greg Wallace about a delicious Masterchef dish: " This is as good as it gets".
The novel has further exceptional qualities. A central character is a randy loss-adjuster who, like the first person narrator, has been attending a conference (but a different one) in Edinburgh: "The loss-adjuster's smile is not sheepish. It's goatish." (p 135). It sneaks in quotations from Chekhov's account of journeying towards Ostrov Sakhalin. On the infolded back blurb there is a final unexpected twist. This novel is a "doosra", as cross-engendered as "Middlemarch", though far shorter: one ball to an over or a Twenty-Twenty afternoon read compared to the five days attention George Eliot demands. Charles Boyle (when he writes for his poetic muse) has hit a perfect cover drive.
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