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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'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
About the Author
Jennie Walker is a pen-name of Charles Boyle, an award-winning poet. Charles lives in London with his wife and two sons.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
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?
By Rotgut
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
Short novel about five days in the life of a woman and the three men in her life, her husband, her lover and her stepson. These days coincide with a Test match between India and England, the newly discovered, rather half-hearted, interest the heroine has for cricket underpins the story.
Written by a poet (using a pen name of different gender and advertised at the end of the book..why?) no word is out of place in this very readable book. Often very poetic this is a leisurely paced work despite its brevity.eg : "There is a cupboard under the stairs...hanging from nails are musty old coats and a pair of binoculars and the chain-and-leather lead of a much-loved dog that died in agony under the wheels of a removal van." (p45)
As a prose poem this works very well...as a novel though it is undeniably less successful. Neither the love affair, the marriage nor the relationship with the stepson are resolved at the book's end, we aren't even told how the cricket match ends.
All a bit flat, the book meanders to a close suggesting bad light may stop play.
Written by a poet (using a pen name of different gender and advertised at the end of the book..why?) no word is out of place in this very readable book. Often very poetic this is a leisurely paced work despite its brevity.eg : "There is a cupboard under the stairs...hanging from nails are musty old coats and a pair of binoculars and the chain-and-leather lead of a much-loved dog that died in agony under the wheels of a removal van." (p45)
As a prose poem this works very well...as a novel though it is undeniably less successful. Neither the love affair, the marriage nor the relationship with the stepson are resolved at the book's end, we aren't even told how the cricket match ends.
All a bit flat, the book meanders to a close suggesting bad light may stop play.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Archana
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.
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