Nick Hornby
Febbre a 90'

This DeRece requires a personal introduction: it was an afternoon a few years ago. A special day. That evening I was going to attend a concert - to be honest, I don't remember whose it was. Most likely it was Glenn Hughes, if I managed to focus well on the period in my memories -, and so, armed with a camera and album covers to autograph for Our Man, I take the train from the station of my cheerful small town and set off for the concert. I take a seat, pull out a book on the history of Rock from my backpack - you want to kill time with something interesting, instead of the usual polite small talk with the person sitting next to you? -, and started reading it serenely.

That book thumbed through and read dozens of times before that occasion. I isolate myself. Page after page, I manage to immerse myself in the electrifying concert atmosphere, which was beginning to take shape forcefully. While I was absorbed in my thoughts, the voices of two women sitting a few rows behind me, pierced my ears. Surely their conversations had been going on for a while, but I became a victim of that part of their conversation: "... oh don't talk to me about it. I can't hear about football", the other: "Tell me about it...", the first: "No but... Luckily neither my son nor my husband follow it, otherwise you know what a drag...".

In that moment, I would have liked to have Nick Hornby by my side - even better his cinematic projection, Paul Ashworth - and maybe with the Ramones' "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down" to seal the scene, he would have railed against the two hapless women, horrified by such brutality in an attempt to explain how much passion and sincerity condition the life of a football fan. Nick Hornby is the famous writer of this novel, but also of other editorial successes later brought to the big screen, like "High Fidelity", for example.

Through this book, which ultimately leaves a sense of an exciting self-analytical journey through the madness of football, Hornby manages to find the access code allowing us to enter the psyche of the fan; not only in the part completely dedicated to football, but also in the part dedicated to life outside football, which, inevitably, will also be affected in everyday choices and interpersonal relationships. Thanks to his witty way of remembering and narrating, he manages to render his strong passion for Arsenal and football in general with a playful and ironic tone. His life is the life of each of us. We are Nick, and Nick is all of us, always complaining about the game - or rather the non-game -, the wrong formations based on the opponent's characteristics, the wrong transfer campaign, the full-back subbed in the '75 instead of a striker when you're two goals down.

He's not a prophet: he's just someone who can narrate the life of those who love football, made of collective rituals and solitary thoughts, of truthful clichés and illusions as important as the real things. Born in 1957, he takes us through his life from '68 to '91, with human changes intertwined with football ones. After all, Hornby's philosophy is that the year doesn't end on December 31st, but when the season ends (...) His passion arose alongside great personal changes, first among them the divorce of his parents. In the early days, football was the real glue between Hornby and his father, who took him to Highbury for the Gunners' home games. It's in moments like this that the author naturally seizes the opportunity to parallel his human and sports side; all told with an apparent detachment - "apparent" because you feel it's a shell, an integral part of his character and his way of seeing things. Because he doesn't want to unnecessarily over-sweeten everything - and cynicism, a true strength making the story lovable, tender, and funny.

Football both is and isn't central, and this is what makes the book great, recommended even for those who don't follow this sport. This novel doesn't leave a stir, but only normality. There's no emphasis, nothing excessive. The captivating life of an ordinary fan remains in which to identify. Perhaps those who find this practice useless and superfluous would lightly understand what goes on in a fan's head and how it affects, for better or worse, life. Because at 20:45 on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, many gather in a London pub, a Munich beer hall, in Massimo's dive... All engaging in bar talk, because bar talk is great (...) Try explaining that to those two women on the train... Shit!

Casciavit