Who Owns Football?
Nick Miller
Bloomsbury Sport, £18.99, pp256
When the soap opera around the owners of football clubs – whether it be nation states, offshore investment groups or financial speculators – seems more fundamental than the sport itself, there’s a big problem. Nick Miller expertly layers this very 21st-century phenomenon with plenty of historical context to ask a more nuanced question about what makes for a good owner in the first place. Ultimately, he finds that being a football fan doesn’t always have to come with such a complicated dance with your conscience.
The Caretaker
Ron Rash
Canongate, £9.99, pp272 (paperback)
Bestselling US novelist, poet and short story-writer Ron Rash isn’t well known in the UK – maybe because his vivid, lyrical stories of rural American life deal in minute specificity – but you can see why Canongate has picked up his eighth novel. The Caretaker is a tender, neatly crafted tale of a close-knit 1950s North Carolina community grappling with the macro (the Korean war, conservative values, prejudices) and the micro (family secrets, parental deceptions, star-crossed lovers). For an introduction to Rash’s evocative world, start here.
The Land in Winter
Andrew Miller
Sceptre, £20, pp384
The long British winter of 1962-63 is the setting, and sets the tone, for Andrew Miller’s glacially paced 10th novel. Best known for 2011’s Pure, Miller is on superb form here as he portrays the everyday lives of country doctor Eric and farmer Bill and their respective wives, Irene and Rita, both of whom are expecting their first child. This is a story of conformity and conflict – against the elements, societal changes and the characters’ sense of themselves. That inner turmoil is brilliantly crafted, and the depiction of the local asylum in particular is chilling in every sense.
• To order Who Owns Football?, The Caretaker or The Land in Winter, go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
