OVER THE TOP WITH THE TARTAN ARMY BOOK REVIEW - June 1998
| One of the weird quirks occasionally thrown up by the
strange, warped timescale involved in writing for magazines is that, although the World
Cup is done and dusted as you read this, I'm writing it two days before the
Scotland-Brazil match. (The first one, that is, not the final.) So unlike you, I've
got no idea whether, with hindsight, this book is a triumphant Top Gun-style tale of a
heroic struggle through infinite adversity finally leading to long-deserved success, or
simply a poignant and depressing Last-Exit-To-Brooklyn chronicle of some of the
world's most dedicated football supporters having their hopes shagged up by a team
unworthy of their devotion over and over again. Which makes reviewing it accurately a bit
tricky. Whichever, though, one thing is certainly true about it - it's basically a collection of drinking stories of varying levels of funniness which were undoubtedly a lot better if you were actually there. It's worth persevering through a pretty grim beginning as it improves considerably as it goes on, but as with all books like this, it'd have been better to sacrifice the "real fan" authenticity a bit and get a proper writer in. VERDICT: Moral: we're basically still on the march with Ally's Army. *** |
|
