Rodge Glass

It’s been a hectic few months…

I’ve been meaning to post about the reception to the new novel for a while but have been busy doing events up and down the country, from Ullapool in the Scottish highlands to back home in Manchester to right down in Bath. Meanwhile, the reviews have been coming in, and I’ve been doing some media stuff too – most of which is documented below. So: first. The reviews. And if you’re wondering about why there are no bad ones included here. it’s because so far there haven’t been any!

“A fine, bittersweet novel…Glass’s narrative is beautifully controlled, full of temporal hops and deft shifts in register.” Independent on Sunday

“Credible and compelling – Glass’s novel might even touch the heart of the most ardent Man City fan.” The Observer

“A complex and moving portrayal of obsession, football and heroes with boots of clay.” Will Self

“Rodge Glass’s novel is a gripping rollercoaster ride through the nature of obsession and the unregarded lives of football failures.” Daily Mail

“Compelling, authentic, pacy. Glass skillfully constructs a tale of how a moment can change a life, how the road less travelled can end with a stumble into the gutter…a novel that talks convincingly of football but whispers persuasively of much else.” The Herald

“For every dream career there are thousands of boys whose dreams are painfully broken. This less-often considered reality is dissected here without losing sight of the love of the game.” Pat Nevin

“The attention to detail is one of the strengths of this moving, snappily-written book…Glass is clearly inhabiting the same territory David Peace so artfully trod with The Damned United as he seeks to interweave a fictional story with actual events… mesmerizing and exhilarating.” The Scotsman

“Absolutely astonishing…nothing short of exceptional.” Liam Bradford, Radio Manchester

“Glass has a unique idea: an unhinged, obsessive failure from the United Class of ’92 blames Giggs for his demise and plots vengeance… deserves a look for its freshness” FourFourTwo

“Not since April 1999, when he dribbled twice round the entire Arsenal team and scored the winner in the FA Cup semi final, has Ryan Giggs’ head been so valuable. The story feels real, the wit is the real thing and I’d really urge everyone to follow Mikey Wilson’s voyage of self discovery.” Graham Hunter, Sky Sports and BBC journalist, author of Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World

“Drawing on an impressive fund of United trivia, Glass views a great team from the perspective of the (fictional) runt of the litter” The Guardian

“Through the characters of men for whom football is a vernacular of the heart, a tradition that offers a reliability absent from the rest of life, Glass explores aspects of the male persona in contemporary British society. He draws out the importance of group identification and hierarchy and what happens when an individual loses their sense of place, how violence becomes a ready option when personal feelings can’t be articulated. He looks at the demands and expectations placed on men….Glass is spot on with the sort of detail that will convince football fans of whatever persuasion. You can practically smell the Bovril at half time. He captures the nostalgia for the days when the big name players played for love of the sport, before money turned the game into something not quite as beautiful as it once was. And through Mike he shows football fandom as a glorious tribal cult that in the end is no substitute for life lived to the full.” Scottish Review of Books

“You don’t need too many fingers to count the times fiction and football come together with any outstanding results: David Peace’s Damned United; Irvine Welsh’s often overlooked Marabou Stork Nightmares; and most recently, Alan Bissett’s Pack Men. To this canon, not quote a first eleven, more an aspiring five a side team, can be added Rodge Glass’s new novel Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs….Glass uses moments from recent history, moments from our popular collective consciousness as his creative starting point, proving that literature is still hugely relevant, and agile enough to respond to our contemporary world.” Gutter Magazine

MEDIA – RADIO, TV, INTERVIEWS:

In the last two months, I’ve appeared on Open Book on Radio 4 with Mariella Frostrup, Men’s Hour on Radio 5 Live with Tim Samuels and Good Morning Scotland on BBC Radio Scotland, as well as being seen on The One Show on BBC One (9/5/12, talking about Alasdair Gray) and recording a reading from the book for STV. Also, a series of interviews have either run or will be running soon, including for STV, City Life / Manchester Evening News, Metro, the Jewish Telegraph, Big Issue and more. In the last few months I’ve also written blogs for The Guardian on both sport and religion. Links to available interviews and podcasts below…

STV interview and filmed reading:

http://local.stv.tv/glasgow/magazine/97952-rodge-glass-on-football-writing-and-the-scandal-which-changed-his-new-book/

Manchester Evening News interview (also run in the Metro):

http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/news/10020470_rodge_glass_talks_about_his_new_football_novel

Manchester Confidential interview:

http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/Bring-Me-The-Head-Of-Ryan-Giggs

Guardian blogs:

(on Mario Balotelli)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/11/mario-balotelli-mancini-fans-love

(on anti-semitic attacks in Manchester)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/03/manchester-antisemitic-attacks?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

BBC Radio 5 Live Men’s Hour:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/menshour#playepisode1

BBC Radio 4 Open Book:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dhdd9#synopsis

As for appearances, I’ll be updating the Events page of this site properly soon, but in the meantime here’s a summary of the main ones confirmed so far for 2012:

Notable upcoming appearances –

Hay-on-Wye Festival (7 June)

London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre (7 July)

Latitude Festival, Suffolk (14 July)

Edinburgh International Book Festival (20 August)

Shetland Wordarts Festival (7 September)

Manchester Literature Festival (13 October)

Dundee Literary Festival (28 October)

Phew.

Things have been more than a bit hectic in recent weeks, with events in Dundee, Inverness, Manchester, and I keep meaning to do a full update of the reviews coming in for Bring Me the Head… (The Observer, Guardian, Mail etc) but there have been so many I can’t keep up. For now though, given these aren’t available online yet, here are the reviews from The Scotsman and The Herald newspapers, both published today. Delighted the reviews have all been so positive so far, and especially pleased at the backing from my adopted nation. Where’s the backlash eh? Sure it’s coming…

THE HERALD, by Hugh MacDonald

‘A beautifully played game of football and fate’

It is, perhaps, best to paint Ryan Giggs by numbers. In his 39^th year, he sprints towards his 1000^th appearance for what is routinely called the biggest club in the world. He has won 33 major medals and, if Manchester United claim the Premiership this season, he will have secured more titles that Chelsea, Newcastle and Leeds United have claimed altogether in their histories.

Giggs, then, is the embodiment of the football hero, down to his sponsored boots and super injuctions. He is more than a bit of a lad, more than a passing fad and thus ideal as a subject of devotion. He flits through Rodge Glass’s novel, haunting the hero with his success and sheer Giggsyism. His spectral presence perversely adds substance to a novel of compulsion and obsession. If Giggs paces the side-lines, occasionally venturing on as a significant substitute, Glass has created a credible central character and lots centre forward in Mike Wilson. The second name is a nod to the original surname of Giggs, who changed his name after his mother divorced Danny Wilson. Glass’s Wilson has a similarly fraught relationship with an absent father, plays in the same youth team as Giggs and debuts for the first team alongside the Welsh internationalist.

It then begins to go wrong for Wilson, as it starts to go brilliantly for Giggs. An injury ends Wilson’s career and starts a descent into alcoholism and gambling addiction. Manchester United is his refuge, if only as a spectator. Giggs is his savior as idol and tormentor, a reminder of what could have been. As Wilson’s life breaks down, Giggs’s career takes wings, a compelling dynamic. But Glass offers more.

He is convincing on the football-mad dad living his life through his son, the intricacies of life as a future professional and the detachment of the superstar. The story is authentic, pacy. But it speaks of darker things as Glass tunes in and out of the first-person account of an increasingly bereft Wilson, knocking on the door of insanity as Giggs marches on triumphantly.

The novel maintains a calm authority amid the bedlam of a football match, a malfunctioning relationship or the disintegration of a personality. Is there anything more chilling than an alcoholic noting a year spent ‘mostly sober’?

Glass skillfully constructs a tale of how a moment can change a life, how the road less travelled can end with a stumble into the gutter. There is nothing dramatically new in the theme, but its execution is strong and there is a powerful pull at the centre of the story. Wilson, used and abused, uses and abuses. He is made vulnerable by personal circumstances and individual failings. His life changed when Giggs misplaced a pass and Wilson was forced into a desperate challenge that ended his career.

Wilson is desperately real. Giggs remains under the cloak of celebrity. Yet their lives started along a distinct path. Their talents and experiences were similar if not identical. But their final collision testifies how violently their paths diverged through fate and a cruciate ligament. Wilson has suffered the fate of all sportsmen – they must die twice, once as a performer and then as a human being – and inhabits the half-life in between. His life seems golden, though his private turmoil of an affair with his brother’s wife is unspoken. Its notoriety, despite the gagging orders, inhabits a novel that talks convincingly of football but whispers persuasively of much else.

THE SCOTSMAN, by Alan Pattullo, 5 May 2012 – ‘He’ll tear you apart – A young footballer’s dreams turn to nightmares in Rodge Glass’s new novel’

As the Old Trafford faithful have had cause to point out every season since 1991, there’s only one Ryan Joseph Giggs OBE.  Or, as he was when he first entered the world, Ryan Joseph Wilson. The player took his mother’s maiden name when his parents divorced.

He shares a lot more than a surname with Mikey Wilson, protagonist of what is easily Rodge Glass’s most commercial novel. Both Wilsons grew up in Salford, and were talented teenagers signed up by Manchester United. The difference is that when Mikey Wilson – or ‘Little Giggs’ as he’s briefly known – steps onto the turf for his first game for the first team, his world falls apart within seconds.

Trying to get the ball back after a poor pass from Giggs, he scythes down an opposing player, tackling him from behind and breaking own leg and the other player’s in the process before the inevitable red card. Game over.

Which is worse? To have once been a footballer, released from the ‘rezzies’ (the reserves) without playing a game for Manchester United, as is the fate of so many? Or to have once been a player who tasted oh-so-briefly what it is like to perform at the Theatre of Dreams before being carted from the pitch; to be remembered, if at all, in mocking fanzine and website articles? One piece, indeed, installs Wilson as the substitute – the substitute – in Alex Ferguson’s all-time worst XI.

While the pain of that leg break is intense, and vividly described by Glass, it is not as debilitating as the bitterness that ends up truly crippling Mikey Wilson. He was the boy set to follow in Ryan Giggs’ slipstream on the wing at Manchester United. It eats him up that he didn’t. It eats him up that Giggs, of all people, is the one whose pass is misjudged, setting him on a course to destruction.

Wilson’s fall comes via those routine footballer pitfalls of drinking and gambling and women, although there is a suggestion that he is wrestling with his sexuality. This could further explain what becomes an ever more dark obsession with Giggs.

It eats him up also that Giggs, meanwhile, goes on to become British football’s most decorated player. The action here ends in 2008, at the penalty shoot-out between Manchester United and Chelsea in Moscow. We know how that ends, of course. In this work of ‘faction’, Glass is able to insert his own shocking end-game.

Where did it all go wrong? The question is poignant down Sir Matt Busby Way, as it was once famously directed at George Best. Fergie himself turns up at the family home to sign Wilson. He is fast-tracked into the first team, Wilson’s father has just flown the nest, so that weighs on his mind. It is, however, the less obvious things that flash into your head as you fret about making your debut for Manchester United: ‘If I piss myself in these shorts, will it be obvious on Match of the Day?’ ponders Wilson as he prepares to come on against Oldham Athletic.

The red card produced from the referee’s pocket is certainly obvious. It should live on in infamy. Only on a few occasions does Glass fail to convince. Fans Wilson meets many years later, even the one nicknamed Computer, can’t remember him. Any Manchester United supporter worth his salt would recall a hapless player sent off 133 seconds into his debut, even if it was nearly 20 years earlier. But this is nit-picking. The attention to detail is one of the strengths of this moving, snappily-written book. Wilson’s career continues on loan at Plymouth Argyle, where Peter Shilton, the former England goalkeeper, is manager (and the dates tie up, I checked).

It’s a realistic scenario, even if the manner of his exit from Plymouth is entertainingly over the top. When it dawns on Wilson that he is again spending 90 minutes on the substitutes’ bench, he flings his tracksuit to the ground and walks out of the stadium while a match is in progress, and keeps on walking. His career is pretty much over from that point but cruel fate hands him another leg break, just to make sure.

Glass is clearly inhabiting the same territory David Peace so artfully trod with The Damned United as he seeks to interweave a fictional story with actual events. It’s a tough assignment. Sometimes the reader can feel like a defender trying manfully to keep up with Giggs’ trickery. It can be mesmerizing and exhilarating, but also sometimes plain confusing. The narrative dashes between decades and flits between the first, second (and even third) person. And yet there is much to admire. There is never a sense that Glass is dipping his foot into a subject alien to him.

There is no let up in the pace. Neither is there much relief for Wilson. Perhaps he might have found some had the novel’s timeframe been extended to include the bombshell news that even Giggs is fallible, after the quite remarkable sexual tangle that saw him become front page news last summer.

Wilson, though, would have noted that the winger has returned, as strong as ever, for his 22^nd consecutive season. Giggs will tear you apart, as the terrace song goes.

Much going on with BRING ME THE HEAD OF RYAN GIGGS this week. The Glasgow launch takes place in Glasgow’s Mono at 6 30 pm on April 4th, the day before official publication, and the Manchester launch follows on April 11th. Details over on the Events page of this site, as well as new events over the next few weeks including Inverness, Ullapool, Dundee and World Book Night.

The Kindle Edition was made available last week, and is currently on offer for a mere 99p on Amazon HERE.

Amazon also have an offer on the trade paperback HERE.

Also published this week, the ebook of Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography, available for the first time on Kindle HERE.

There was a rave review of the novel in the Independent on Sunday this week. Find the original review in full HERE, or the complete text below.

Look out for more news soon….

INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Review of Bring Me the Head… by David Evans.

This time last year, Ryan Giggs was coasting towards yet another Premier League title with Manchester United. Talented, dedicated and unassuming, the Welshman was regarded as something of an anachronism in football: a gentleman among Rooneys.

But all of a sudden, like a vintage claret left out in the sun, Giggs’s reputation was spoiled. There were allegations of extra-marital affairs, and an absurdly self-defeating attempt to keep them out of the press. The same newspapers that had hailed him as a saint began to paint him as a sex-mad control freak, a Celtic Casanova.

As someone who thinks that Giggs has been treated a little harshly, your reviewer approached Rodge Glass’s latest novel with some trepidation. With its provocative title, and a lurid cover image that mimics those indignant tabloid front pages, it seems designed to cash in on the whole imbroglio: one expects a media satire, or perhaps a stern morality tale.

Happily, it turns out to be something more interesting. Set largely in 2008, at the height of Giggs’s prelapsarian pomp, this fine, bittersweet novel explores the perils of hero worship.

At its centre is Mikey Wilson, a fictional ex-footballer who was once a rising star in Man U’s youth set-up. He made his debut in 1992, and looked set to score when Giggs put him through on goal. But the pass was exquisitely misjudged, and, forced to chase the ball, Mike careened into an opposition defender, suffering an injury that ended his career.

Fifteen years later, he remains a United fan, but his support is tinged with regret. Watching the evergreen Giggs he feels “sweet pleasure, and sour pain”, and develops a weird, perhaps quasi-sexual fixation on the star. He has surreal, Giggs-related dreams, and contributes to a website that documents every flourish of the winger’s left boot.

Glass’s narrative is beautifully controlled, full of temporal hops and deft shifts in register. The story is told in a mixture of the first person and a detached, omniscient voice, which allows us to glimpse the slippage between Mike’s presentation of himself and his actual circumstances.

These circumstances – as is sadly the case for many retired footballers – aren’t great. A recovering alcoholic, he struggles to hold down a job and is rarely permitted to see his young son. Desperate, he sends letters to Giggs asking for money and support, but receives no response. Finally, Mike decides to track him down to deliver the message personally.

There are shades of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in this obsessive pursuit. Ultimately, however, Mike is not just a Travis Bickle-style sociopath but a representative of those legions of young footballers “paid only in sweeties and promises of things to come”, before they are cast aside. The book is, in part, an indictment of the heartlessness of those running the sport.

But through it all, a residual fondness is apparent, whether it is in the evocation of the “full-up-to-bursting” elation of a surging crowd after a goal, or the “simple pleasure” of watching the highlights on Match of the Day. Taken as a whole, Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs is rather like one of his protagonist’s anguished missives: a love letter to the game, riven with both bitterness and affection. It is probably best enjoyed by those who share that affection – there really is a lot of football in it – but I’d encourage anyone to give it a try. It is by turns unsettling, moving and gently funny. Best of all, there’s nary a superinjunction in sight.

This week’s news:

OPEN BOOK

I’ve been confirmed for Open Book on Radio 4 – I’ll be interviewed by Mariella Frostrup, and it’ll be on your wireless at 4pm on Sunday 18th March – I’m heading to London to record it on the 14th. (Which means that if I do too many sweary words then they have time to edit before broadcast.)

LATITUDE

I’ve been confirmed for the Latitude Festival on Saturday 14th July in The Literary Arena alongside Pat Nevin and Alan Bissett. Great line up – never mind books, I’m looking forward to seeing St Vincent, Laura Marling, Bon Iver, and about a hundred others. That one probably won’t feel like work. Ticket information can be found here.

SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS / FOURFOURTWO

Reviews starting to trickle in already for the new novel. Two very different readerships, here:

The new issue of the Scottish Review of Books is available in full online here, including a full review of Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs by Jennie Renton. But here’s an extract:

“Through the characters of men for whom football is a vernacular of the heart, a tradition that offers a reliability absent from the rest of life, Glass explores aspects of the male persona in contemporary British society. He draws out the importance of group identification and hierarchy and what happens when an individual loses their sense of place, how violence becomes a ready option when personal feelings can’t be articulated. He looks at the demands and expectations placed on men….Glass is spot on with the sort of detail that will convince football fans of whatever persuasion. You can practically smell the Bovril at half time. He captures the nostalgia for the days when the big name players played for love of the sport, before money turned the game into something not quite as beautiful as it once was. And through Mike he shows football fandom as a glorious tribal cult that in the end is no substitute for life lived to the full.”

Good stuff.

Meanwhile, FourFourTwo magazine said the novel is “a unique idea…worth a look for its freshness” but thought it was “too complicated, with too many intertwining narratives.” Still, they did have a favourite quote, but it was a bit dirty…

More reviews to come in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, this weekend (9-11 March 2012) sees Strathclyde University’s Write Now Creative Writing conference at the Mitchell Library, featuring the likes of Sara Sheridan, Nicola Morgan and Ewan Morrison, followed by my event alongside Alan Bissett and Richard Wilson on Sunday 11th March. Details here.

It’s almost reviews time – so I’ll be pretending not to care, then reading everything, then acting all cool like I’m not fussed. Good times ahead. All started this weekend, with the first review of Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs in Gutter magazine Issue 6. Nice review, though I don’t know who I’m thanking as the reviews are all anonymous. If you don’t know it, Gutter’s well worth subscribing to – new issue features story from Caine Prize winner Olufemi Terry, and there’s new fiction from Kevin MacNeil too. Always a good thing. Here’s a lifted bit from the review:

“You don’t need too many fingers to count the the times fiction and football come together with any outstanding results: David Peace’s Damned United; Irvine Welsh’s often overlooked Marabou Stork Nightmares; and most recently, Alan Bissett’s Pack Men. To this canon, not quite a first eleven, more an aspiring five a side team, can be added Rodge Glass’s new novel Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs….Glass uses moments from recent history, moments from our popular collective consciousness as his creative starting point, proving that literature is still hugely relevant, and agile enough to respond to our contemporary world.”

GUTTER

Hi, I’m Rodge. Welcome to my website.

My new novel, Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs, is published by Tindal St Press on April 5th 2012. There will be two official launches of the book, in Glasgow on April 4th (@ Mono in King’s Court), and Manchester (@ Deansgate Waterstones) on April 11th. All are welcome and tickets are free, but please leave a comment here or contact me directly asking for a place to be saved at either event. At last count, over half the tickets had already gone for both launches, so please do claim them while you can.

Download a PDF invite to the Glasgow launch

Download a PDF invitation to the Manchester launch

With the publication of Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs just a few weeks away now, me and the good folks at Tindal Street Press are currently putting together a growing list of live dates. Amongst other places, I’ll be heading out to Hay-on-Wye Festival, London Literature Festival, Latitude Festival, Aye Write!, Ullapool Festival, Literary Dundee and Manchester. More tbc. For details and links please see the Events page. Meanwhile, a huge thanks to everyone who turned out for the sold out show as part of Margins Festival, the joint bill with Graham Hunter. His book Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in The World available, and is awesome. Though reading the parts about them beating Man U was painful.