Chris Hulme

My first book of 2009 and perhaps a strange choice for the supposedly festive season of glad tidings and good feeling towards all men (and women), but I have had this book for a while now and it seemed a good start to the 999 challenge to read a book, a genre and author I would not normally read, which is the main reason I started the challenge. And I was not disappointed, tentatively dropped into my 'Biography' category this is the story of a prison football team of murders who have been sentenced to life imprisonment during one season. Although perhaps less to do with the football and the beautiful game, such as it is in the amateur leagues where beauty is often substituted for misguided enthusiasm (and a more entertaining spectacle), this book looks more closely at the British prison and justice system through the eyes of a football team and subs of murderers.
Chris Hulme alternates tales of training sessions and games with the stories of why the players are there inside. Engrossing as these tales are, told in their own words by the convicts, these are harrowing stories, brutal living and brutal crimes can often make the reader feel sick and it is not a book I would recommend lightly to someone I did not know. Hulme manages to tell the reader the stories without making any judgement or criticism himself, indeed he often presents the inmates version of events with their views on the outcome, the legal system, their criticism and judgements which makes the book, I feel, more interesting but no less disturbing.
The football, and the warders who run the sport, try to make the inmates feel again what it is like to be free, to be part of a team and how to behave in a group of people (a micrcosm of society), though even the warders who put in the extra hours in to run the team do not view what they do or the effect it has on the inmates with rose tinted glasses.… (mehr)