In December 15, The Scotsman newspaper included A Man’s Game as the only novel in its ten best sports related books to buy for Christmas, alongside Alex Ferguson’s autobiography and books about Usain Bolt and Glasgow Warriors:
The only novel in this year’s selection, A Man’s Game is a crime story set in the world of Scottish football. It’s gritty stuff, alighting on topics such as violence, addiction and misogyny as it scratches at the seedy underbelly of the beautiful game. It’s Fifer Ness’s first published novel and a follow-up is already in the pipeline.
Also in December 15, both the Dunfermline Press and the Central Fife Times featured the book centering on the many Fife locations featured in the story:
http://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/14131199.Cowden_features_in_new_football_novel/
Writer Alan Ness, 52, grew up in Dunfermline and has used his West Fife surroundings as part of the backdrop to ‘A Man’s Game’, a story about the trials and tribulations of two Scottish footballers on very different trajectories.
In May 16, the Daily Record featured the book as one of its Fab Firsts series of debut novels by “exciting new talent”:
In June 16, Lothian Life magazine gave the book an extremely positive review:
In Scotland, we write books with big moral purposes: Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Jekyll and Hyde, The House with the Green Shutters. Edinburgh-based writer, Alan Ness, has pulled off an unusual literary coup.
His first novel, A Man’s Game, succeeds in addressing huge ethical issues but its core story looks at our national passion, football.
It’s a book about honesty and dishonesty, hope and desperation, guilt and atonement, but football is a law unto itself. The painfully brief prologue offers the reader an expensive room, empty but for two prone bodies, one male and bloodstained, one female and holding a knife, both possibly dead. As it happens the male is (Or was?) a highly successful, professional footballer.
Ten years after the events portrayed in the prologue, the footballer’s team-mates have progressed to great things – or been relegated to the lower divisions. Ness simultaneously exposes Scottish football’s moral under-belly and grasps its energy and camaraderie as he explores the impact on those who had been in that room before the bodies fell prone and seeks to identify who in the room had done what to whom.
The second theme is journalism. Cynical hack, Jim Donnelly, gets his teeth into the events in the expensive, body-strewn room. His professional instinct tells him there’s a bigger story behind these events than has been revealed to date. He follows his instincts across Scotland, from Glasgow to Edinburgh, from Cowdenbeath to Stenhousemuir, and finds more than a seedy story.
Ness grapples with the macho culture in Scottish football, Scottish journalism – and in wider Scottish society. As the title suggests, with due irony, football is a man’s game, and so is journalism. He manages this without sounding po-faced. Indeed the book races along at a fair pace, sharp, insightful, humorous and well-informed. It even concludes with a degree of ambiguity: whose confession to the killing in the room was truthful? A Man’s Game is well worth the read for anyone interested in contemporary Scotland.
Amazon reviewers have been very positive. Here are a few quotes from their on-line reviews:
There’s a real authenticity and sense of place to the story and characters.
This is quite a brave book, taking on a difficult subject from, mostly, the perspective of perpetrators and with a kind of singleness of purpose.
This is a good and deceptively ambitious book that deserves to be read
I thoroughly enjoyed the gritty reality of the characters, they actually felt like people I’d met.
The dialogue is vivid and has a natural Scottish, central belt, authenticity.
I loved this book. On the one hand it’s a cracking, easily read story but on the way there are some very powerful, emotional scenes.
It may be set in that world but it’s about much more. It seems to be more about the way that men treat women in what is still a male-dominated society. Football, crime and a bit of social commentary – can’t be bad.
A MAN'S GAME 