Earth/John Boyne

This is not your normal football novel as the subject – Evan Keogh- is gay and does not like football but instead wants to become a painter.

The story is that his teammate Robbie Wolverton is accused of raping a girl which Evan filmed.

Much of the 168 pages of this novella is taken up with the trial.  The author has an above average knowledge of court procedure appreciating that the defence barrister’s rôle is to besmirch the victim. He also understands modern football and sexual mores (or lack of them).

What could be a more gripping novel is marred by its brevity and its sordidness of character and content. Evan, Robbie, his father – Lord Wolverton – and even the two barristers are selfish unsympathetic and self-serving. Evan is pimped around rich people known to Rafe his first contact as a rent boy.

His tale is a sordid one.

The court scene and whether the two will be acquitted make for a good read and the subject matter is a different take on the football world and maybe the reader should also be more sympathetic to Evan who at the end reaches a form of resolution with his conscience. They say of Irish writers ‘ you can take the man out of his country but not the country out of the man’ and like many an Irish write he harks back to the rural Southern Ireland from where Evan came