Two Sports

These two novels revolve around the central theme of sport; big wave surfing in the first novel, and cricket in New York in the second. Both are quirky novels but the authors show intimate familiarity with their sporting theme. Coincidentally, both novels feature brief affairs with women addicted to kinky and dangerous sexual practices.

Breath, Tim Winton, 2008

Surfing at Margaret River

Winton specializes in taking his readers into the world of life in Western Australia. Breath is a coming of age novel of a small town boy who turns his developed ability to hold his breath for long periods under water into an ability to successfully surf the big waves which may hold the fallen surfer underwater for a very long time. Our main character is 14 years old at the start of the novel who together with a slightly older crazy brave friend insinuate themselves into the local small wave surfing fraternity. Their skill brings them to the attention of a legendary aging Australian (at least 30) surfer, a big wave guru who decides to take on a couple of adoring disciples. We are introduced to the use of off shore navigation charts to locate areas likely to produce big waves, and to meteorology, used to predict where and when the really monumental waves will be breaking. One of the guru’s favorite sites is a mile off shore and you have to paddle in and out to surf it. Another is an impossibly isolated cove where the big waves are shared only with a 15 foot shark. This novel tells us a lot about the obsession with big wave surfing and the never ending search for the biggest wave anywhere in the world. The guru’s retired (at age 25) free style skier American wife (she injured her knee) has an inheritance which allows the couple to live and travel anywhere without worry about work. Enjoyable read.

Netherland, Joseph O’Neill, 2008

Cricket at Van Cortland Park

O’Neill was born in Ireland, raised in the Netherlands, and lives in New York, which tells us how he came up with this quirky story. The main character is a Dutch oil and gas analyst working for big investment houses. He moves to London where he meets his wife, a corporate lawyer, who dreams of living in New York. They move to New York in 1999, buy a Tribeca loft and have a son.

The events of 9/11 force them out their loft into the infamous Chelsea Hotel and the wife decides to return to safe old London, leaving the Dutch husband on his own in New York. He spots a cricket bat in the trunk of a taxi driven by a South Asian and discovers that cricket is alive and well in New York, at least among West Indians and South Asians. He digs out his old childhood bat and gear and joins a team from Staten Island, the only white cricket player in New York. Thus begins a lonely man’s odyssey into the immigrant underground world of New York cricket lovers.

Cricket remains unfathomable despite the author’s best efforts but we do learn that cricket is largely a ground game and the field matters. Although the New York area has a cricket history dating from the American Revolution, their are no regulation fields and the grounds in New York are so bad that cricket can only be played by hitting the ball into the air like baseball. Other than that, cricket is as impossible to understand for the American reader as always. Maybe you have to have played cricket as a child. Still an entertaining book.