Beautiful ... Inclusive and universal, curious and tender, perceptive and wise ... The Season is joyful, but there is a carefully woven thread of melancholy running through it, and it is this that gives the book its lovely, old-gold sunset hue ... Enchanting, perceptive.
[Garner] is working in epic mode in The Season ... Garner is not alone in making extravagant claims about the grandeur of football but it is her language that ennobles the game and the players. Garner has always been an extraordinary stylist and in The Season her prose, athletic, soars and dances, just like those young footballers. How does she do it, you wonder, as she transforms yet another grey training drill into a lesson on endurance and camaraderie ... As ever, the simplicity and precision of her diction anchors her supple syntax.
Meditative and moving ... As an invisible witness, she takes an almost anthropological approach to understanding her youngest grandchild and his peers, boys on the cusp of manhood ... The author tends to romanticize the game, even at its most brutal.
There’s a quiet subversion in [Garner's subject] ... Examines masculinity with a similarly tender, unfiltered lens ... Not much happens in the traditional sense, but Garner’s knack for wringing meaning from the everyday keeps it compelling. It’s classic Garner actually: taut, observant prose, sprinkled with wry ‘nanna jokes’ and descriptions that bring the scenes to life.
Richardson’s account is the most thorough to date ... Tireless researcher though he proves himself to be, Richardson was unable to prise Matthiessen’s files ... While True Nature is critical of its subject throughout, it is well written, diligent, and indulgent of Matthiessen’s idiosyncrasies.
