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24 For 3
Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman's attention is torn between her husband's insistence on explaining the rules of cricket, her lover's preference for mystery, and the worrying disappearance of her sixteen-year-old stepson. By Tuesday night the outcome of the match will become clear - but whatever happens, the lives of the players will be changed forever. 24 for 3 is a funny and moving story about love, family, and whether or not one should always play by the rules.
144 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 6, 2019
‘Last man, 8’
On what scale? If 1 to 10 then he must have been good; was it just that someone better came along?
Jennie Walker's 24 for 3 came to my attention via a recent Times article featuring Independent Foreign Fiction Prize champion Boyd Tonkin's Top 10 Cricket Novels (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ho...).
But the novel was published in 2007 and has a fascinating history. It was one of the first books published by the small independent CB Editions, founded by Charles Boyle, which has become one of the UK's finest publishers, their most recent success being the Wellcome Book Prize winning and Goldsmiths shortlisted Murmur by Will Eaves.
One of the earliest press reviews of the book came from the wonderful Nick Lezard's column in the Guardian (Guardian - bring him back!!): https://www.theguardian.com/books/200..., who remarked on the rather unusual print-on-demand model, and suggested this was a contender for the Orange Prize (now Women's Prize) for Fiction.
Then - rather like Murmur - the novel was picked up by a larger publisher, Bloomsbury. As Charles Boyle has explained (http://sonofabook.blogspot.com/2019/0... - see item 32 and 82):
But it turned out that Jennie Walker was actually the pen-name for Charles Boyle himself (who also publishes as Jack Robinson): https://archive.is/20120915113818/htt.... Leading to the marvellous billboard:
Indeed this is essentially one of the books responsible for the creation of CB Editions in the first place.
So much for the history - what about the book?
Well it is a beautifully written story (Boyle/Walker/Robinson is a poet as well as a novelist), laugh out loud funny at times, equally accessible to cricket fans and those (such as the narrator, certainly at the book's outset) to whom the game is a complete mystery, and a moving story of relationships.
Set during the 5 days of an England vs. India test match (Five days?), the book is narrated by a c40 year old woman, a part-time Spanish-to-English translator and part time art college teacher (where she teaches the history of science: Like teaching atheism in a seminary, or pot holing to airline pilots.)
As the game - and her understanding of its arcane nature - progresses, she navigates between her relationships with:
- her lover, an insurance loss adjuster
- her husband (who remarried her after his first wife died shortly after giving birth to their son)
- her teenage stepson, who has gone missing
- their (slightly cliched) Polish aupair, who has never quite got round to moving out, and the aupairs seemingly hapless boyfriend whose job is apparently doing the crossword in student bars
The book draws, but never forces, analogies between the tangled relationships and the game of cricket itself.
And the title, 24-3? That's England’s score at close on the 4th day, chasing 287 to win, the game beautifully poised. Who wins - if anyone (cricket is famous for its inconclusive draws despite the length of elapsed time) - in both love and cricket: you will have to read the book to find out.
On what scale? If 1 to 10 then he must have been good; was it just that someone better came along?
Jennie Walker's 24 for 3 came to my attention via a recent Times article featuring Independent Foreign Fiction Prize champion Boyd Tonkin's Top 10 Cricket Novels (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ho...).
But the novel was published in 2007 and has a fascinating history. It was one of the first books published by the small independent CB Editions, founded by Charles Boyle, which has become one of the UK's finest publishers, their most recent success being the Wellcome Book Prize winning and Goldsmiths shortlisted Murmur by Will Eaves.
One of the earliest press reviews of the book came from the wonderful Nick Lezard's column in the Guardian (Guardian - bring him back!!): https://www.theguardian.com/books/200..., who remarked on the rather unusual print-on-demand model, and suggested this was a contender for the Orange Prize (now Women's Prize) for Fiction.
Then - rather like Murmur - the novel was picked up by a larger publisher, Bloomsbury. As Charles Boyle has explained (http://sonofabook.blogspot.com/2019/0... - see item 32 and 82):
There is a clause in the standard contract that basically states that if after signing the author gets an offer from someone richer and better-looking, altogether more eligible, then the author is free to go off with them, as long as I can have the first four months. It’s a sort of prenuptial.The novel came with a blurb, unusually, from Mick Jagger, alongside those from Sally Vickers and Lionel Shriver and won the Society of Authors McKitterick Prize for a first novel by an author over 40 (https://www.societyofauthors.org/Priz...). Bloomsbury planned to enter it into the Orange Prize.
Christopher Reid’s The Song of Lunch went to Faber. Jennie Walker’s 24 for 3 went to Bloomsbury. May-Lan Tan’s Things to Make and Break went to Sceptre. Will Eaves’s Murmur has gone to Canongate. Without payment to CBe for publishing rights. Other CBe books have been re-published in the US, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, without payment to CBe. This is fine. I don’t own the writers I publish. If you think I should be making money here then you don’t get it.
But it turned out that Jennie Walker was actually the pen-name for Charles Boyle himself (who also publishes as Jack Robinson): https://archive.is/20120915113818/htt.... Leading to the marvellous billboard:
Indeed this is essentially one of the books responsible for the creation of CB Editions in the first place.
So much for the history - what about the book?
Well it is a beautifully written story (Boyle/Walker/Robinson is a poet as well as a novelist), laugh out loud funny at times, equally accessible to cricket fans and those (such as the narrator, certainly at the book's outset) to whom the game is a complete mystery, and a moving story of relationships.
Set during the 5 days of an England vs. India test match (Five days?), the book is narrated by a c40 year old woman, a part-time Spanish-to-English translator and part time art college teacher (where she teaches the history of science: Like teaching atheism in a seminary, or pot holing to airline pilots.)
As the game - and her understanding of its arcane nature - progresses, she navigates between her relationships with:
- her lover, an insurance loss adjuster
- her husband (who remarried her after his first wife died shortly after giving birth to their son)
- her teenage stepson, who has gone missing
- their (slightly cliched) Polish aupair, who has never quite got round to moving out, and the aupairs seemingly hapless boyfriend whose job is apparently doing the crossword in student bars
The book draws, but never forces, analogies between the tangled relationships and the game of cricket itself.
And the title, 24-3? That's England’s score at close on the 4th day, chasing 287 to win, the game beautifully poised. Who wins - if anyone (cricket is famous for its inconclusive draws despite the length of elapsed time) - in both love and cricket: you will have to read the book to find out.
September 13, 2012
In a couple of years when I will consider whether to apply for British citizenship, there will probably still be two things I will have to come to terms with before I can in all honesty consider myself a UK citizen. One is drinking tea with milk and the other understanding the rules of cricket. I don’t know which is less likely but the odds on both are not huge.
The narrator of this novella drifts between her husband and her lover who are both watching the same cricket game which takes place over a few days. As she is trying to figure the rules of cricket and life she realises that neither make too much sense to her. Her husband, Alan, seems like an absolutely decent guy, and to me at least, a lot more interesting than the mysterious lover referred to as the ‘Loss Adjuster’ who comes across as an accountant type. But, hey, love is blind. On the other hand, it is really not her husband that narrator wants to find a replacement for; it’s her stepson Selwyn, who as a moody, emancipated teenager no longer needs a mother figure in his life.
Now, that I’m editing my novel and sweating over every word, crying and biting my nails because there is that one odd sentence that is ruining my whole chapter, I feel I owe it to writers to read their every word. No skimming, slow reading. I have been a big of fan of doing things slowly ever since I turned thirty as I felt I got there way too soon.
As I carefully read ‘The Rules of Play’ (aka ’24 for 3’) I really got the chance to appreciate the poetry of it.
“Selwyn’s room: a mess. But at least it was his mess, before I started making my semi-automatic attempts to tidy up on Friday night. Now the mess is no one’s. It’s as if – which is odd, because I didn’t feel this when no one knew where he was, so why should I feel it when I do know? – he’s already moved out, gone off into the life he’s suddenly discovered is his own, and what’s left is just the brittle casing of his time as caterpillar.”
Jennie Walker is actually a pen-name of UK poet Charles Boyle and many have been fooled and have praised him on how authentic his female voice was. To me that just proves that there is no such thing as a male or female voice. It’s all bollocks and can we please just let go of that already? And while we’re letting go of that we can also stop making the covers of all books written by women look so damn ridiculous.
This complaint has nothing to do with the book reviewed and I’m sorry to be using this space in such a way. The truth is that I liked the book a lot and the only thing I’m going to pick on is the character of a Polish ex-au pair Agnieszka, who still lives with the narrator’s family. She has lived with them, an English family, for ten years now. She is obviously bent on making her English as perfect as possible by doing crosswords and dating eloquent English guys. Yet, after a decade in London she still speaks mostly in gerund clauses, completely unaware of the existence of past tense and says things like ‘the fish that flies’ because she doesn’t know the English word for a dolphin (which, by the way, is ‘delfin’ in Polish). I often find it that writers have no clue what an actual foreigner would struggle with while learning English (or any foreign language for that matter). They don’t even know the basics like that reading is the easiest and understanding people speaking is the hardest.
The narrator of this novella drifts between her husband and her lover who are both watching the same cricket game which takes place over a few days. As she is trying to figure the rules of cricket and life she realises that neither make too much sense to her. Her husband, Alan, seems like an absolutely decent guy, and to me at least, a lot more interesting than the mysterious lover referred to as the ‘Loss Adjuster’ who comes across as an accountant type. But, hey, love is blind. On the other hand, it is really not her husband that narrator wants to find a replacement for; it’s her stepson Selwyn, who as a moody, emancipated teenager no longer needs a mother figure in his life.
Now, that I’m editing my novel and sweating over every word, crying and biting my nails because there is that one odd sentence that is ruining my whole chapter, I feel I owe it to writers to read their every word. No skimming, slow reading. I have been a big of fan of doing things slowly ever since I turned thirty as I felt I got there way too soon.
As I carefully read ‘The Rules of Play’ (aka ’24 for 3’) I really got the chance to appreciate the poetry of it.
“Selwyn’s room: a mess. But at least it was his mess, before I started making my semi-automatic attempts to tidy up on Friday night. Now the mess is no one’s. It’s as if – which is odd, because I didn’t feel this when no one knew where he was, so why should I feel it when I do know? – he’s already moved out, gone off into the life he’s suddenly discovered is his own, and what’s left is just the brittle casing of his time as caterpillar.”
Jennie Walker is actually a pen-name of UK poet Charles Boyle and many have been fooled and have praised him on how authentic his female voice was. To me that just proves that there is no such thing as a male or female voice. It’s all bollocks and can we please just let go of that already? And while we’re letting go of that we can also stop making the covers of all books written by women look so damn ridiculous.
This complaint has nothing to do with the book reviewed and I’m sorry to be using this space in such a way. The truth is that I liked the book a lot and the only thing I’m going to pick on is the character of a Polish ex-au pair Agnieszka, who still lives with the narrator’s family. She has lived with them, an English family, for ten years now. She is obviously bent on making her English as perfect as possible by doing crosswords and dating eloquent English guys. Yet, after a decade in London she still speaks mostly in gerund clauses, completely unaware of the existence of past tense and says things like ‘the fish that flies’ because she doesn’t know the English word for a dolphin (which, by the way, is ‘delfin’ in Polish). I often find it that writers have no clue what an actual foreigner would struggle with while learning English (or any foreign language for that matter). They don’t even know the basics like that reading is the easiest and understanding people speaking is the hardest.
July 18, 2015
I don't worry too much about diversity in my reading material. My interests are broad enough that by the end of any given year I have a nice demographic balance. This year, perhaps because of my sprint through Hard Case Crime's catalog, my reading list has been very white and very male. I grabbed this one off of my "to read" stack to balance the scales a bit, but after finishing it I discovered that Jennie Walker is a pen name for the poet Charles Boyle. Dang it.
It comes as no surprise that the author is a poet. The appeal of this novel resides almost entirely in the word, the line, and the phrase. The plot is very simple. An upper middle class woman seems to have everything. A successful husband, a beloved stepson on the verge of moving out, a rewarding career and a degree of financial security. Despite all this, she takes a lover and although she's dedicated to this course of action she's not quite sure why.
The novel plays out over the five day course of a cricket match. Both her lover and her husband are big cricket fans, and they each try to explain the game to her. There are rough parallels between the course of the match and the course of her relationships. The stepson has an inkling about the existence of her affair and distances himself from the family. A Polish nanny, kept on long after she is needed, fusses about finding herself a successful English husband, and the protagonist can't help but compare their situations. . . . And that's it. There's no more to the book. There is a confrontation and a nebulous resolution, but they play like almost any other day in her life.
There is psychological truth here, and joy to be found in the words themselves, but this is not the place to look for story.
It comes as no surprise that the author is a poet. The appeal of this novel resides almost entirely in the word, the line, and the phrase. The plot is very simple. An upper middle class woman seems to have everything. A successful husband, a beloved stepson on the verge of moving out, a rewarding career and a degree of financial security. Despite all this, she takes a lover and although she's dedicated to this course of action she's not quite sure why.
The novel plays out over the five day course of a cricket match. Both her lover and her husband are big cricket fans, and they each try to explain the game to her. There are rough parallels between the course of the match and the course of her relationships. The stepson has an inkling about the existence of her affair and distances himself from the family. A Polish nanny, kept on long after she is needed, fusses about finding herself a successful English husband, and the protagonist can't help but compare their situations. . . . And that's it. There's no more to the book. There is a confrontation and a nebulous resolution, but they play like almost any other day in her life.
There is psychological truth here, and joy to be found in the words themselves, but this is not the place to look for story.
February 5, 2016
This failed to capture me. Thankfully, it was a quick read.
A collection of self-centred characters stumble through five days of a test match, I think that I would have rather watched paint dry. I just found it flat.
Avoid.
A collection of self-centred characters stumble through five days of a test match, I think that I would have rather watched paint dry. I just found it flat.
Avoid.
October 15, 2020
24 for 3 (2008)
Il mio unico contatto con il cricket è il ricordo di Alice che usa un fenicottero come mazza, perciò mai avrei pensato di leggere un libro in cui questo sport è usato come metafora della condizione di una donna inglese, divisa tra marito, amante e figlioccio. Ammetto che l'autore (probabilmente consapevole che a nessuno importano le regole del cricket) si impegna nello spiegare i vari step della partita Inghilterra-India (durata: 5 giorni; e io che mi annoio dopo 10 min. di calcio...) e li collega in modo pertinente alla vita della protagonista, che è però irritante nell'egoismo del volere tutto senza sforzo e senza rinuncia. Manca poi secondo me la logica di certi fatti, Ah, è vero che il papa più giovane aveva 11 anni: è Benedetto IX.
Il mio unico contatto con il cricket è il ricordo di Alice che usa un fenicottero come mazza, perciò mai avrei pensato di leggere un libro in cui questo sport è usato come metafora della condizione di una donna inglese, divisa tra marito, amante e figlioccio. Ammetto che l'autore (probabilmente consapevole che a nessuno importano le regole del cricket) si impegna nello spiegare i vari step della partita Inghilterra-India (durata: 5 giorni; e io che mi annoio dopo 10 min. di calcio...) e li collega in modo pertinente alla vita della protagonista, che è però irritante nell'egoismo del volere tutto senza sforzo e senza rinuncia. Manca poi secondo me la logica di certi fatti, Ah, è vero che il papa più giovane aveva 11 anni: è Benedetto IX.
May 9, 2020
temo che per apprezzare l'opera occorra essere una donna. inglese. interessata al cricket. non rientro in alcuna di queste categorie.
April 3, 2024
Very disappointing. I didn’t finish it _ I couldn’t stand the main character
September 12, 2015
'Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman's attention is torn between her husband who is all too keen to explain the rules, her lover who prefers mystery, and her sixteen-year-old stepson who hasn't come home.
By Tuesday night the match will have been won or lost. Or it may have reached a draw in which only pride may be salvaged.
Whatever the outcome, the lives of all the players will be changed forever.'
24 for 3 is a peculiar book. It's lyrical yet restrained, joyful yet full of sorrow. Musing on life and how to live it, it's a Big Novel with a capital B, yet it runs to little more than 100 pages. The author her(him)self confounds expectations, too; the real Jennie Walker is a man named Charles Boyle, yet his female voice convinces totally, so much so it leaves you wondering whether the concept of a 'male voice' and a 'female voice' really makes sense.
There's lots to enjoy here. The writing is clean, poignant and enjoyable for its own sake, without being overbearing. The novel's structure, meanwhile, is brilliantly simple - five days in a woman's life, coinciding with a Test match between England and India. She attempts to get her head around the rules of the game, and get a better grip on her life at the same time. Fans will be amused by lots of the references, and non-fans will recognise the woman's puzzlement and frustration. Cricket - with all its kinks and idiosyncrasies and moments of elation and heartache and tedium - is a wonderful lens through which to see life.
But despite everything it has going for it, 24 for 3 ultimately ends up a little short of its ground. The author is a poet by trade, and this much becomes clear as the mass of small insights and beautiful sentences fails to coalesce into a coherent or memorable whole. There's not much story to begin with, and what there is doesn't really go anywhere. The characters, meanwhile, are thin and intangible, even the protagonist. She's having an affair with another man and claims to be in love with him, yet he's deeply uninteresting, much less fleshed-out than her husband, and the causes of her feelings remain mysterious.
Many non-fans struggle to get their head around the concept of the draw in cricket.
'You mean they play for five days and in the end it's all for nothing?'
For all its lovely writing, as the book fizzles out in a nebulous ending, it's hard to avoid a small parallel with that idea.
By Tuesday night the match will have been won or lost. Or it may have reached a draw in which only pride may be salvaged.
Whatever the outcome, the lives of all the players will be changed forever.'
24 for 3 is a peculiar book. It's lyrical yet restrained, joyful yet full of sorrow. Musing on life and how to live it, it's a Big Novel with a capital B, yet it runs to little more than 100 pages. The author her(him)self confounds expectations, too; the real Jennie Walker is a man named Charles Boyle, yet his female voice convinces totally, so much so it leaves you wondering whether the concept of a 'male voice' and a 'female voice' really makes sense.
There's lots to enjoy here. The writing is clean, poignant and enjoyable for its own sake, without being overbearing. The novel's structure, meanwhile, is brilliantly simple - five days in a woman's life, coinciding with a Test match between England and India. She attempts to get her head around the rules of the game, and get a better grip on her life at the same time. Fans will be amused by lots of the references, and non-fans will recognise the woman's puzzlement and frustration. Cricket - with all its kinks and idiosyncrasies and moments of elation and heartache and tedium - is a wonderful lens through which to see life.
But despite everything it has going for it, 24 for 3 ultimately ends up a little short of its ground. The author is a poet by trade, and this much becomes clear as the mass of small insights and beautiful sentences fails to coalesce into a coherent or memorable whole. There's not much story to begin with, and what there is doesn't really go anywhere. The characters, meanwhile, are thin and intangible, even the protagonist. She's having an affair with another man and claims to be in love with him, yet he's deeply uninteresting, much less fleshed-out than her husband, and the causes of her feelings remain mysterious.
Many non-fans struggle to get their head around the concept of the draw in cricket.
'You mean they play for five days and in the end it's all for nothing?'
For all its lovely writing, as the book fizzles out in a nebulous ending, it's hard to avoid a small parallel with that idea.
March 11, 2025
The cover says that the author is Jennie Walker, who is actually Charles Boyle, an award-winning poet. I’m not sure why Boyle felt that he needed to use a female pen-name though there is a note on the Wikipedia page for this novella that seems to imply he was having trouble getting it published originally.
The story is set against the backdrop of a 5-day cricket Test Match between England and India. Our unnamed narrator is a woman, married to Alan, with stepson Selwyn and ex-au pair and now house guest Anieszka rounding out the household. She has also just started an ex-marital affair. Both her husband and lover, at various times and in various situations, attempt to explain the rules of cricket to her; it seems to be dominating the men’s attention at this time. Our narrator thinks her affair is still a secret but when the missing Selwyn turns up sleeping on the sofa in her lover’s flat she realises she is completely mistaken about this. And what about everything else?
This is a well-written and interesting novella dealing with modern relationships. The narrator asks a number of questions about her life and about cricket which are intelligent and amusing. R: 3.3/5.0
The story is set against the backdrop of a 5-day cricket Test Match between England and India. Our unnamed narrator is a woman, married to Alan, with stepson Selwyn and ex-au pair and now house guest Anieszka rounding out the household. She has also just started an ex-marital affair. Both her husband and lover, at various times and in various situations, attempt to explain the rules of cricket to her; it seems to be dominating the men’s attention at this time. Our narrator thinks her affair is still a secret but when the missing Selwyn turns up sleeping on the sofa in her lover’s flat she realises she is completely mistaken about this. And what about everything else?
This is a well-written and interesting novella dealing with modern relationships. The narrator asks a number of questions about her life and about cricket which are intelligent and amusing. R: 3.3/5.0
May 21, 2009
This is a diverting and satisying novella that provided a fulfilling and quick read.
The events in the book take place over five days as a cricket match between England and India is played. The narrator is a woman whose name we never learn. She has a husband, a lover, a stepson and a European boarder who used to be her stepson's nanny.
Over the course of the five days, with one chapter per day, the narrator attempts to understand the complex game of cricket. As the nuances of the game are unravelled so are the nuances of her relationships. Cricket becomes a metaphor for a marriage, an affair, a parent-child relationship.
Jennie Walker is the pen name of award winning poet Charles Boyle, and the writing is tight but descriptive as you may expect from a poet. I was surprised to find it had been written by a man as it reads with a totally convincing female voice.
I recommend this wee book and I think I am becoming a fan of the novella .
The events in the book take place over five days as a cricket match between England and India is played. The narrator is a woman whose name we never learn. She has a husband, a lover, a stepson and a European boarder who used to be her stepson's nanny.
Over the course of the five days, with one chapter per day, the narrator attempts to understand the complex game of cricket. As the nuances of the game are unravelled so are the nuances of her relationships. Cricket becomes a metaphor for a marriage, an affair, a parent-child relationship.
Jennie Walker is the pen name of award winning poet Charles Boyle, and the writing is tight but descriptive as you may expect from a poet. I was surprised to find it had been written by a man as it reads with a totally convincing female voice.
I recommend this wee book and I think I am becoming a fan of the novella .
December 10, 2023
I received this in 2008 as a gift. It felt ( as it says on the cover) gem-like, something small and precious, and has continued to fascinate (read at least once more between then and now. I still cannot analyse which the vital components, just know there is something in its mysterious unfathomableness, its several facets, that will forever be endlessly absorbing. Love it.
And I definitely don't remember reading before that Jennie Walker is a pseudonym.
Another re-read of this little book, its physicality alone a joy, and that I remember so little of the words; the story, just the pleasure of the reading adds to the experience.
And I definitely don't remember reading before that Jennie Walker is a pseudonym.
Another re-read of this little book, its physicality alone a joy, and that I remember so little of the words; the story, just the pleasure of the reading adds to the experience.
October 16, 2014
It's rare for sports metaphors to reach beyond cliché, but in the case of this book, it works. As the narrator learns about cricket, we learn about her and come to see her predicament as akin to a batsman in the tricky position of being unsure whether to bad or the draw or go for the win. It's not as hokey as that sounds, which is a testament to Walker's ability to find something new to say about cricket and to say it in such taut, compelling language.
April 25, 2012
Pleasant enough, but not really for me.
Cricket features very little. I think the test match is fictitious, but with Pieterson getting a duck - maybe not...
And, who won? Was there not 83 needed with 3 wickets left? Bad light?
Or did I miss something...
Cricket features very little. I think the test match is fictitious, but with Pieterson getting a duck - maybe not...
And, who won? Was there not 83 needed with 3 wickets left? Bad light?
Or did I miss something...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews