Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Crucial Reading, 11 Jan 2001
Interesting and disturbing depiction of a contemporary working-class Londoner. The novel portrays a bleak England which has little to offer its poor, white natives. The central character--who one imagines must be loosely based on the author--is a nasty man, whose one outlet is football hooliganism. A Chelsea fan, he defines his existence not around actual matches and scores, so much as he does around the pre and post-match violence (if any). The book seems to suggest that for him, and his ilk, society has nothing to offer and he must retreat to the camaraderie of his fighting friends to find any release and meaning in his existence. The chapters alternate between focusing on the main character on match days, and peripheral characters (some only barely related to the novel at all) and slices of London life. Despite the very raw descriptions of violence and sex, the writing is too deft, and the message too sharp for the book to be considered a mere cult novel. King's subsequent novels, Headhunters, England Away, and Human Punk are all equally vital--if not as raw--reading. Great non-fiction companions to this book are Colin Ward's classic, Steaming In, and Nick Danziger's Danziger's Britain.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Football stereotypes in the most blunt form possible, 25 Jul 2003
This book follows the story of a bunch of working class football fans who follow Chelsea, for whom the weekly highlight consists of a match at Stamford Bridge or an away game, a good punch-up with the opposing fans (before and after the match), a load of beer and a curry. The first sentence really sets the scene perfectly where the narrator (the book’s written in the first person, a clearly very nasty little man) tells you what he thinks of Coventry and their contribution to the war as part of the build up to Chelsea vs Coventry.The book is racist, offensive, sexist and provides non-football fans with as much ammunition as they want to turn noses up at football fans. For football fans and in honesty non-football fans as well, it strangely gives an insight into being a football fan, what’s behind the bizarre addiction that is Saturday afternoon for 9 months of the year. I found this book highly entertaining and wonderfully written – there are some bizarre chapters where the chapter is only one very very long paragraph which are a bit odd to read but all in all I think King has done a fantastic job on this book. However, two things which count against this book are the repetitiveness to the overall theme of the book, and the next book which King wrote called Headhunters which I thought was much better. Also recommended by King is England Away which is in part a sequel to the Football Factory.
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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
A silly little book but worth a quid from a charity shop., 18 Sep 2006
... But, all in all, a pretty flawed enterprise.
Horrible blokes seek out fights with like minded retards; get drunk; shag birds; hate everybody except their staunch mates. All overlaid with some pretty cliched alienation stuff. Principal non-character / Narrator does 1990's Arthur Seaton meets Clockwork Orange number. Attempts to fit behaviour patterns into some sort of criminal moral framework - kill nonces, never run from a fight, stick by your mates etc.
It suffers from the fatal flaw of attributing outbreaks of middle class reflectiveness, class consciousness and flair for language to knuckle dragging, permanently pissed scumbags.
This means that you get a sub- Robert Elms apologia for white psycho culcha right down to the tedious and inevitable skins 'n' ska references. Also, the author bottles it and can't quite go the whole racist hog - so the scumbag main character plays chess with his Indian mates down in Southall - reflects on the British Empire etc.
Character development? Forget it.
And as for the violence King seeks to have it both ways. On the one hand he makes the correct point that violent deaths are rarely associated with (non-Heysel) hooliganism and that it's mainly drinking, running around shouting / throwing a few punches ank kicks. However, when you are writing violent porn to titillate fat, braindead, British couch potatoes you have to spice it up a bit.
I felt a bit grubby having read it
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