- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (July 1969)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140029516
- ISBN-13: 978-0140029512
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 11 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 322,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Better known for his outstanding "A Kestrel for a Knave" this was Barry Hines first book and written back in 1966 it has stood the test of time remarkably well.
Like AKFAK it is the gritty tale of a northern schoolboy, Lennie Hawk, who not only is a gifted scholar but an outstanding footballer, who everyone thinks has the potential to play for England. The book is full of the social values of the period with pressure being put on Hawk to not only make the most of his sporting talent but achieve his academic potential also. It is also a wonderful reminder of times when the local sporting heroes did play for the local team, and still got the bus to the ground and drank in the local pubs.
The style of book does take some getting used to though. It is peppered with machine gun like dialogue between the characters, sometimes pages of conversation going back and forth with no indication of the speaker, which does take some concentration, but once you are hooked then it does let you go.
There are also some fantastic descriptive one-line sentences that describe the scene and the mood better than two or three pages of waffle could.
For example "He disappeared up the tunnel leaving the ground deserted in the swishing wind, under the darkening sky" or "The bulb shone through the shade like a frosty orange, and the wind knocked on the window and tried to get in." - Brilliant!
With Hines own academic background you do wonder whether he wrote the book purely as a piece of entertainment, or whether, like AKFAK has become, he imagined that there would be classes of schoolchildren having to write character assessments on the various people in the book and having to dissect each chapter for plot development. I say this because some of the characters especially seem in some ways a little one-dimensional as in they can only act and feel in one particular way.
All in all though, this is a fantastic piece of work, a wonderful reminder of less complicated and perhaps more innocent times and is a excellent viewpoint of the social history of the times.
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