space
Reader Reviews | |
Review by Felix (310311) Rating (8/10) Review
by Felix It took him fifteen years to write its sequel, and you can understand why. The Network is a Dickensian novel, crammed with incident and characters (some of them Real People) and multiple narratives. The Frenetics all reappear, older though not necessarily wiser, but there are five new characters who act as the narrators. Every single page is told to the reader by one or other of them (helpfully, each has his or her own typeface) - a technique which allows Richard Heller to convey their feelings directly and vividly, and to change fluently between their different voices. The main character and principal narrator, Steve, is a teenager who is up against it. He is the only child of feuding parents. Ruefully, he notes "my family’s a battleground and I’m just a small hill which each side occupies to fire on the other." He is lonely and self-mocking and without a future. He spends all his spare time reading the books given to him by a much-loved uncle (which provide him with an unusually rich vocabulary) and playing cricket. He does not even have a team to play for, but walks a long way to the nets in a public park, to bowl at anyone who asks. An unpromising start, but Steve keeps faith with his dream of becoming a fast bowler and bit by bit it becomes true. Through cricket, he gets a network of new relationships which change his life. The Network is a huge tribute to the power of sport. At times it seems too good to be true. It is almost a modern fairy story: the young warrior battles with honour through adversity and comes into his kingdom. Some parts are terribly sentimental, but Richard Heller stops it falling off the edge, by sparky dialogue and by powerful insight on some big issues, including dysfunctional families, homophobia, bullying, desertion, self-inflicted guilt. The cricket passages, in the nets or on the field, are brilliant, especially the match narrated by Steve, which gets right inside his head. Anyone who has ever played any sport with passion will identify with his ever-more desperate prayers for success.
The Network is a thick novel to cover a few months in
an ordinary teenager’s life. But an awful lot happens - not just
to him but to everyone he meets - and it bowls along as fast as
its young hero. |
|
Column Ends |
space