The Story of a Gamechanger
By Robert McCrum
Notting Hill Editions, £15.99
The penalty is Ireland’s gift to the world, coming from a young amateur goalkeeper of Milltown, Armagh, Willie McCrum, a relative of the author. “The Irishman’s Motion” sounds like something Myles of this parish might have tackled once, but it was the rule devised by Willie and introduced in 1891 that changed the beautiful game forever, making the onion bag even more taut. The penalty rule, writes Robert, was the “result of luck as much as calculation. Prima facie, it offers terrible odds.” As an English man, he knows what he speaks. A fun little book, stuffed with pensées on the peno, and a deep dive into McCrum family history in Ireland. Among the many literary allusions are existentialism and ex-Leeds United kicker David Batty. Philosophy: on me head, son.
Duets
Scratch Books, £11.99
A fizzing, experimental, and fine collection of eight short stories, each of which, as the title tells us, is written by two writers through collaboration. The exploratory clash of styles and sensibilities offer inventive results in a subversive clang of the form (music to any ears desirous of experimental fiction); from the Kubrickian spectral of Merrily Merrily by Eley Williams and Nell Stevens, to looking at concepts such as the burden of happiness through memory breakdown in Roelof Bakker and David Rose’s Morphic Resonance. All works are suitably challenging and rewarding for the reader, impressing on a basic level of each duo working abstractions into finished ideas. The Girl Chewing Gum by Adrian Duncan and Jo Lloyd, meanwhile, is worth the cover price alone.
Defiance: Racial Injustice, Police Brutality, A Sister’s Fight for the Truth
By Janet Alder with Dan Glazebrook
Dialogue Books, £25
Christopher Alder was a black former paratrooper, at one time serving in Armagh during the Troubles, who after a fight outside a nightclub died in police custody in Hull in suspicious circumstances in 1998 (1,905 people have died in police custody or following contact with the police in England and Wales since 1990). His sister Janet recounts in shocking and harrowing detail a story of justice denied for more than quarter of a century, of frustrations found on every official avenue as the family seeks to bring those responsible to court (in 2000 an inquest jury ruled that Christopher had been unlawfully killed). Janet continues to campaign, and wants this eye-opening book to serve as a guide for “families who will go through this ... what they are up against”.
