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This is a moving and funny account about the highs and lows of growing up, slowly replacing an ambition to be a left arm spinner in his school team with the dazzling realities of being a guitarist in world renowned band. To be able to weave these three topics together so beautifully and seamlessly is quite a skill - there’s something here for everyone, and don’t be put off if you don’t watch cricket! Robert Westall grew up on Tyneside during the 1930s and 40s, the only child of remarkable parents and grandparents. It was an uphill struggle to carve their name in the history of Liverpool music, but Echo and the Bunnymen became iconic, with songs like ‘Lips Like Sugar,’ ‘The Cutter’ and ‘The Killing Moon’. Felix White charts his life through a litany of cricket matches, characters and afternoons spent in sparsely populated Oval stands watching Surrey.
Felix's charmingly written voyage of self-discovery through cricket and music reminds us of the power in understanding the hands we are dealt, and how the journey itself is one to embrace. Felix meets them at each signposted moment to find out what was really behind those moments that gave cricket fans everywhere sporting memories that would last forever, sending the book into an exploration of grief, transgenerational displacement and how the people we've known and things we've loved culminate and take expression in our lives. I laughed and cried and like Felix cricket has been a part of my life (for over fifty years) Cricket is so often a metaphor for life and can be a tremendous force for good (check out cricketwithoutboundarie. From school-day horrors and mud flinging fun to nights at Liverpool’s punk club, Eric’s, Sergeant was fuelled by and thrived on music.
His band, The Maccabees, released four studio albums before disbanding at their commercial peak after a number one album, major festival headline shows and an Ivor Novello award. The way it was written made me smile, I found myself reading sentences again just to let the words sink in. Felix explores the grief of losing his mother too young, and the security blanket that cricket provided and continues to provide, all the while striving to emulate his heroes by achieving greatness with his band.
The best book I've read about cricket - although it's not about cricket really - rather an essay on grief and how cricket and music helped the author both and cope and avoid the tragic loss of his mum. It’s an autobiography beginning when he first starts to discover both cricket and music which weave his childhood years together including the loss of his mother as a teen. It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music.It’s insightful, and beautifully written, and that well-quoted line from Wandavision really came to mind when reading it. Having followed the Maccabees when they were active, and keeping in touch with Felix's writing on Cricket, I had been looking forward to this book. It offers a sense of genuine empathy and understanding not just with cricket fans, but sports and music fans across the world, in articulating our reasons for pouring so much meaning into something that we simply cannot control. The cricket links and the painful impact of supporting Englands cricket team is eminently relatable.
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