A Season With Verona by Tim Parks (2003-03-06)

Even if you have little interest in football, you'll find great entertainment in Tim Parks' season spent following the melodrama, folly, tears and cheers of the fanatical fans of Hellas Verona as their beloved team fights to retain its position in the top level of Italian football. It's a marvelous, comical, alarming look into the Italian mindset when it comes to their obsessive devotion to the game and their teams. As an English resident of Verona, Parks is something of an outsider on the inside, which lets him become swept up in the general mayhem yet still provide something of a unique perspective that no Italian could.Give it a read. It's easy going and you may just find yourself engrossed in the emotional train-wreck of Hellas Verona's season.

A wonderful read! For a person reasonably familiar with Italian football but not familiar with the Italian people,this was an eye opener. Parks travels for an entire season with the Brigate ( the Hellas Verona fans) and lives to tell the tale! Read it for a rowdy rousing tale of male bawdiness, football as a reflection of the nation conscience & above all the relationship between an English man and his affection for a provincial Italian club.

Gives an overview of how fans behave / think in Italy . It's gripping and shocking at times and does provide cultural insights too

I purchased this book after reading My Italian Neighbours which I really enjoyed. However I would only recommend this book to an avid Italian soccer fan. I am midway through and will struggle to finish it, a rare experience for me. I quite enjoyed the first couple of chapters setting the scene in relation to supporters and the experience of a couple of games.

Tim Parks, author, academic, and supporter of his adopted home town club, Hellas Verona, recounts in this book his travels to every match they play, home and away, throughout a season. It's highly dramatic stuff, as the team is involved in a bitter Serie A relegation battle to the very end of the season. Parks immerses himself with the fanatical supporters, often villified as racist, and gets to meet a number of highly colourful characters. The passion of the supporters is apparent, and their frustrations with their team form much of the narrative. However, it's also a fascinating insight into the mentality of football supporters, the place of football in Italian culture, rivalries both local and between the North and South of the country, the interweaving of football, politics and the authorities, and the role of money in sport. Entertainingly written, the team's progress grips you to the very end. Highly recommended.

Totally absorbing and unusual book. I bought it on the basis of it being a football book and indeed, in the main, it is but it also has much social commentary on Italian life which is almost as interesting! Tim Parks essentially follows Hellas Verona, a fanatically supported but underachieving side, for a complete Serie A season, recording the few highs and the many lows of a season long struggle against relegation. This is set against three backdrops, the first being his observations and interaction with the teams hard core fan base and in particular his experiences at away fixtures, the second being a socio-political observation of how Italy ticked at the time of the book (culminating in the Italian general election) and the third being his access to the clubs owner, management and players. In my view it's extremely well written and I like that Tim hasn't shied away from some of the more "earthy" sides of his experience but in the same breath he doesn't pass judgement giving a genuinely balanced feeling to his writing. The books chronological ordering makes sense but works really well given the exciting culmination to the season. I am a football fanatic and have a strong interest in Italian culture so this book is tailor made for me but would be enjoyed I think by a wide audience. Strongly recommended.

I'd not really heard of Hellas Verona before I started this book but I wanted to be dragged under the skin of someone else's obsession. I was not disappointed. Firing on the fronts of comedy, passion, linguistic intrigue, football mania, travel, friendship, relationships and more, Tim Parks will make sure you understand what it's like to spend a season biting your nails and wringing your hands. I loved this book so much I'm going to Verona next week to see for myself.

This book is so special because Tim Parks lived and breathed Hellas Verona for two seasons, and probably in what was the club's most significant period over the last 25 years. He was at the games, meeting colourful characters, travelling almost, you feel, with the team as they went through ups and downs over the season. This is a superb book which feels like non-fiction but it's not. It really happened. You get to meet some talented young players too who went on to win things at bigger clubs, like Alberto Gilardino. A great book for all football enthusiasts.

After discussing "The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro" with someone, I was recommended this book. It's not a bad book, and quite enjoyable at times, I expected more. In my opinion, not a patch on "the miracle" which is a superior story.The actual print wasn't great quality - the paper is very thin.