In The Guardian today Frank Keating discusses novels which use cricket as their main subject – there aren’t as many as you might think, but here are the best:
- Shehan Karunatilaka Chinaman
- Joseph O’Neill Netherland
- Jennie Walker 24 For 3
- Peter Gibbs Settling The Score (NYP – due in summer 2012)
- P G Wodehouse Mike (1909: second half published as Enter Psmith in 1935; both parts released in 1953, the first half as Mike at Wrykyn and the second as Mike and Psmith)
Keating doesn’t mention Hugh De Selincourt’s The Cricket Match, published in the 1920s. Cricket matches feature in other novels, of course, for example, in L P Hartley’s The Go-Between and A C MacDonell’s England, Their England.
See also in the Telegraph. Alan Massie’s article Why there are no good English novels about sport
About peabody
How could you omit the early Raffles stories of E W Hornung in which Raffles is not only a suave man-about-town who happens to commit burglaries, but also a gentleman cricketer, in fact a marvellous spin-bowler?
I also forgot ‘Half of the Human Race’ by Anthony Quinn, a novel about the romance between a suffragette and a cricketer, which earned very favourable reviews when it was published last year.
I’ve just started reading ‘Netherland’: I was initially unconvinced by O’Neill’s style, but have been drawn in by the story, which seems very real – almost as if he’s recounting his own experiences rather than writing a novel.
we have recently published a novel about cricket.
“Guile and Spin” by Stuart Larner
available as an ebook on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guile-and-Spin-ebook/dp/B008FBZPHE
Humorous, it is set in modern-day recession-hit Northern England .