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Review
'The Following Game is tremendously good. As with his book on teaching, Jonathan Smith seems to have invented a genre to meet his immediate needs. The result is completely natural: talking voice, spontaneity of exposition, insights and connections popping up as and when they need to, candour, uncompromised expressions of feeling all that. So it speaks to me who couldn t be more indifferent to cricket with great directness and passion.' --Chrisopher Reid, winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2009
'The Following Game is a wonderfully subtle auto-biography, witty, reticent, modest, laugh out loud humorous (on many pages), generous, uncomplaining, self-deprecatory, observant, sensitive, classless, profound, and widely perceptive of ideas, places and people. It is and will remain a classic.' --The Observer
'The Following Game is a wonderfully subtle auto-biography, witty, reticent, modest, laugh out loud humorous (on many pages), generous, uncomplaining, self-deprecatory, observant, sensitive, classless, profound, and widely perceptive of ideas, places and people. It is and will remain a classic.' --The Observer
'The Following Game is a wonderfully subtle auto-biography, witty, reticent, modest, laugh out loud humorous (on many pages), generous, uncomplaining, self-deprecatory, observant, sensitive, classless, profound, and widely perceptive of ideas, places and people. It is and will remain a classic.' --The Observer
'The Following Game is a wonderfully subtle auto-biography, witty, reticent, modest, laugh out loud humorous (on many pages), generous, uncomplaining, self-deprecatory, observant, sensitive, classless, profound, and widely perceptive of ideas, places and people. It is and will remain a classic.' --The Observer
Product Description
The Following Game is about passion and obsession. It's about cricket, family and poetry, but most of all it's about a father following his son's career in the public eye and the close relationship they share. Jonathan Smith is the father of Ed Smith, a prominent writer and former Kent, Middlesex and England cricketer. The Following Game is a follow-up to Jonathan's critically-acclaimed 2002 book The Learning Game, one of the most talked-about books in education over the last ten years.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
I have read no book so immediately and intensely involving. One feels, from the first, gripped, privy to such private thinking, such personal emotion, that you must surely apologise to the author if you stop reading, even to nip for a pee. For you are interrupting a conversation with a long-absent friend. Being good conversation, it flows without effort: life, death, long-haul flights, poetry and prose, the Taj Mahal, front foot defence, sleepness nights, too cunning squirrels, framed by wisdom (Wisden?), laughter and the creases of teacher's life. The breadth and depth of Smith's emotional shot-making - his timing - is simply first class. An extraordinary and brilliant book!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Having read The Learning Game as a new teacher, when a friend recommended Jonathan Smith's latest book based on cricket and his relationship with his son (with a few classroom anecdotes in the background) it seemed the ideal birthday present for my recently-retired-from-teaching father, but probably not one for me to read. My father loved it and finished the book within a few days of his birthday, so I thought I would give it a go too.
The mix of biographical / autobiographical memories recorded in Smith's conversational and informal style can't help but create the feeling of being let exclusively into his private world, and having been let into that world it would seem rude to leave half-way through, so I finished the book. Smith traces his son's cricket career against the backdrop of a father-son holiday in India, and his recent cancer diagnosis. As a cricketing novice I was skeptical that I would enjoy this book, but the frequent references to cricketing heros of the past or detailed explanations of a tricky innings are relatively easy to follow and I even learnt something about the game! All the charm, wit and honesty as Smith recounts tales of the past make this book highly readable and I was finished in three days - but then again I am a teacher on summer holidays....
The mix of biographical / autobiographical memories recorded in Smith's conversational and informal style can't help but create the feeling of being let exclusively into his private world, and having been let into that world it would seem rude to leave half-way through, so I finished the book. Smith traces his son's cricket career against the backdrop of a father-son holiday in India, and his recent cancer diagnosis. As a cricketing novice I was skeptical that I would enjoy this book, but the frequent references to cricketing heros of the past or detailed explanations of a tricky innings are relatively easy to follow and I even learnt something about the game! All the charm, wit and honesty as Smith recounts tales of the past make this book highly readable and I was finished in three days - but then again I am a teacher on summer holidays....
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
The Following Game is not only a wonderful page turner but much more, with enticing variations in tone, language, and style, and a model of `less is more'. It rightly recalls Montaigne. Only at the end of the book does one realise how well Jonathan Smith has presented the people of his life: cricketers, friends, colleagues, parents, parents-in-law. All are realised from the inside without physical description. At the centre are his closest family, David (his brother), Becky (a daughter's happily brisk presence), Ed ( his Kent, Middlesex and Test cricketer and Times journalist son) whose underlying generosity of mind and heart emerges so well in the record of Jonathan's and his India trip, and above all Gillie (his wife) not prominently mentioned but for the attentive reader at all points centre stage and at the heart of the book.
Lastly the book's structure. In place of a straightforward narrative the author uses short chapters on apparently inconsequential themes. By the end this not only reveals a chronology but a complex picture of a life of strong ideas and ideals and the self-discipline with which the author approaches them. This is autobiography as Wittgenstein did philosophy. A critic looking for layers of creation might think that the book started as a Life of Ed and that is certainly embedded there but this element ends up as just a part, an important one of course, of a life and times of the author quite unlike the portentousness of those words. Among the poems interpolated between chapters is Edward Thomas's `As the Team's Head-Brass'. It is not fanciful to see The Following Game with something of the same structure. Both book and poem touch in the lightest but deepest way on innumerable general and personal themes.
Overall this is a wonderfully subtle auto-biography, witty, reticent, modest, laugh out loud humorous (on many pages), generous, uncomplaining, self-deprecatory, observant, sensitive, classless, profound, and widely perceptive of ideas, places and people. It is and will remain a classic
Lastly the book's structure. In place of a straightforward narrative the author uses short chapters on apparently inconsequential themes. By the end this not only reveals a chronology but a complex picture of a life of strong ideas and ideals and the self-discipline with which the author approaches them. This is autobiography as Wittgenstein did philosophy. A critic looking for layers of creation might think that the book started as a Life of Ed and that is certainly embedded there but this element ends up as just a part, an important one of course, of a life and times of the author quite unlike the portentousness of those words. Among the poems interpolated between chapters is Edward Thomas's `As the Team's Head-Brass'. It is not fanciful to see The Following Game with something of the same structure. Both book and poem touch in the lightest but deepest way on innumerable general and personal themes.
Overall this is a wonderfully subtle auto-biography, witty, reticent, modest, laugh out loud humorous (on many pages), generous, uncomplaining, self-deprecatory, observant, sensitive, classless, profound, and widely perceptive of ideas, places and people. It is and will remain a classic
Most Recent Customer Reviews
On being a father - and more
One of the most touching , amusing and insightful books I have read.
All women should read it to see that men can be emotional, irrational, loving and ...human. Read more
All women should read it to see that men can be emotional, irrational, loving and ...human. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Adam
A book for anyone who loves anything........
At the core of this book, which fits into no simple category, is the relationship between the cricket loving teacher/author and Ed Smith, his cricketing son: ("I do remember seeing... Read more
Published 8 months ago by fortunes fool
Wisdom and Wit
This book already feels like an old favourite. It is sitting on my bookshelf within easy reach, with well-thumbed pages and turned-down corners. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Tamzin87
Kindred Spirit
I have been a fan of Jonathan for many years in fact I went to school with his wife. This book is like sitting down on a summer's evening with a glass of something nice and having... Read more
Published 10 months ago by cheryl
Nostalgia
When I heard that this book had been published, it became an instant "must have". I knew the author early on his career when I had the good fortune to be one of his pupils. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Bernard
THE book for lovers of the sensitive and skilful
Imagine being obsessed with cricket for as long as you can remember. Imagine then having a son who goes on to play for England. Read more
Published 10 months ago by geraldp
Vintage sherry and ice-cream
The Following Game is a major treat. There is a dessert which a friend of mine contrived last year, completely by accident, which it distinctly resembles. Read more
Published 11 months ago by The Dikler
A great book to share- and perfect for fathers' day
The book is beautifully written. It's by no means only for sports fans, though they will be hooked by its novel take. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Jo London
As good as The Learning Game
I was fortunate enough to have been given The Learning Game some years ago by a pupil who was leaving my school. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Jane Taylor
Book of the Year material
Just finished this book which my 42 year old son gave me. It is a lovely book full of passion and Jonathan Smith is obviously a fairly remarkable man. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Brian Webster
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