BOOKS
A Fan for all seasons
My debut book, A Fan For All Seasons, is out now (published by Vintage). It’s a memoir about sport, grief and my brother Dan, who passed away suddenly in 2015, aged 43. Dan was a huge sports fan and in his memory I undertook an unexpected journey to see as many great sporting events as I could in a single year, to create the ultimate season ticket: from football to handball, Wimbledon tennis to Wimbledon Greyhounds, and from rugby to Rubik’s Cubes. In doing so it deals with issues of mental health, bereavement and how we express ourselves through sport - one of our greatest inventions, and what Stephen Fry calls ‘the most important unimportant thing in the world’. Hopefully you’ll find it’s all wrapped up with warmth, sensitivity and humour.
It’s had rave reviews in The Sunday Times and The Daily Mail, and I’ve written exclusive features for The Evening Standard and The Big Issue.
Even with that coverage, it’s one of those books whose success will rest to a large extent on word of mouth and bottom-up support. So if you like what I do, I’d be over the moon and several planets if you can support the book, either at your local bookshop or at the leviathan that is Amazon (who are doing a deal at the moment), You can buy it here.
IN PRAISE OF ‘A FAN FOR ALL SEASONS’
“Such a good story. Touching, heartfelt, funny, informative and beautifully written too.”
“Acute, funny and moving.”
“A heartfelt memoir through grief, family and a very funny, obsessive love of sports.”
“A lovely, funny, sad and happy book about sport, life, death and remembrance.”
“This is important. Warm, sad and funny. CS Lewis’s ‘A Grief Observed’ for the Fever Pitch set.”
“The writing is vivid and funny. A wonderfully touching book.”
“The book... [has] honesty and passion at its heart. Jon Harvey is an excellent recreator of the atmosphere at a packed stadium or a hushed theatre... Most affectingly of all, he shows how sport can sport can play its part in grieving.”
“Brilliant. Most men use sport as a way of avoiding having to talk to each other about their feelings. Jon Harvey has turned this idea on its head and used it as a way of understanding his own loss and grief. ”
“Jon is always surprising, always funny. Which is different from saying he’s surprisingly funny. That would be negative. And I’m being positive. I’ve never done one of these quotes before.”
