Season

by George Harrison

For ten months of the year, two men are drawn to adjacent seats in a stadium, carrying the burdens of life and pouring all their hopes into their beloved but ailing team.
Fatherless and fretful, the Young Man is trying to nurture a precarious new relationship and to find his place in the world. The Old Man, an increasingly isolated carer for his fading wife, knows he has little left to look forward to. Neither fan is a comfortable talker. However, in a slow-motion play of nods, silences and guarded chats, they strike up a tentative friendship across the generational gap.
Told through thirty-eight chapters – one for each game of the Premier League campaign – Season is a lyrical, hypnotic and gently uplifting study of loneliness and modern masculinity. About much more than football, it celebrates the healing, unifying and maddening role of ritualised sport in the lives of ordinary people.

Genres: Fiction, Sports

384 pages, Hardcover

Published January 9, 2025

About the author

George Harrison is a writer based in Norwich. He is the author of Season, a literary novel about male inarticulacy, atomisation, and intergenerational friendship, explored through the prism of sporting fandom.

George has also worked as a freelance editor and ghostwriter on an eclectic shelfful of non-fiction books. His editorial back catalogue ranges from the memoirs of a professional golfer to true-crime stories and a book about the life of a South African spy.

Despite having grown up in the West Country, George is a lifelong Norwich City fan and is fortunate now to live just a short walk away from Carrow Road. George wrote Season, his debut novel, while attached to the Escalator Talent Development Programme at the National Centre for Writing.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two men, one in his 20s, the other elderly, have season tickets to watch their local English Premiership team, and are allocated seats next to each other. They don’t know each other but, by pure chance, their paths will cross roughly every fortnight over the course of a season.

The word “atomised” kept coming into my mind as I was reading this novel. Neither character has his troubles to seek in his life away from the football stadium, and fundamentally, both men are lonely and rather dissatisfied. They are often introspective even when they are part of the stadium crowd, but on the other hand, the matches provide them with an opportunity to forget their troubles for a short time, and to escape the drab routine of their lives. The pair slowly form a bond over the course of the season, but the author doesn’t overdo it, and that adds to the quality of the novel.

The football itself mostly plays a secondary role to the two characters. Nevertheless, the team is struggling to avoid relegation, and the author keeps up the tension about the outcome, particularly towards the end of the season. In the last crucial relegation decider, I was willing the team to get a result, almost as if I were there! (The book doesn’t mention the name of the club, but multiple references let the reader know it is Norwich City).

I was really quite taken with this one. It was a nice idea to use the football season as a way of observing the lives of the two men. It would be a detached reader who didn’t sympathise with them.

Well, onwards to next season!

[Spad53 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual book this one. It uses a season of the Premier league as background for a novel. I make it the season of 2021-22, but the author has made some changes. Never mind, because it’s not really about football, it’s about the unlikely friendship that grows between two fans who get season ticket places beside each other, their lives and problems. The young man has love problems and for the old man it’s health. I identified with both, and if you want to find out how men’s brains work read this! I found it a bit too philosophical in places, but a fair share between football and novelism. What I really liked was that it was about one of the clubs that the premier league is full of, which are not quite good enough, I’m a Watford supporter and in fact done exactly the same yo-yo trip between the premier league and the championship (heaven and hell) as the club in this book, and very often at the same time. It didn’t take me long to work out which club the book was about, not saying though.
I enjoyed this one a lot, it is full of little knowledge titbits about football and a certain city.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this hidden gem in the library. It’s a cosy book that’s not about cats or bookshops. Instead, it offers a unique perspective on the challenges and concerns of men’s lives, drawing parallels between life and soccer.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because of its unusual but interesting setting — the stands of a Premier League football club. But I loved this book because it’s about so much more than football. Really, it’s not a football novel at all, although I understand why it’s presented as such!

Two unnamed men start a tentative friendship while sharing adjacent seats in a football stand. They are both season ticket holders. For 38 chapters (or games in a season) we learn more about these mens’ lives: their relationships, their existential anxieties, their hopes. It’s a beautifully written, quiet novel which engages with some pretty big themes — masculinity and isolation in the modern age, football’s role in society, and even men’s mental health. I really loved the way the author gets inside the minds of these two men at different points in their lives and makes us vouch and care for them in different ways, because they are ordinary and real, their inner lives are complex and layered, and they are grappling with what it means to be human.

There are echoes of Jon McGregor, Sally Rooney, and Claire Keegan here. Quiet, realistic, almost dreamlike in its writing. A really beautiful and thoughtful book, I loved it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Kate Knowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant! A completely different read to my usual selections of books, this was a breath of fresh air. In addition to the narrative surrounding a growing friendship, I was completely pulled into the progress of the team throughout the season and why people are so deeply passionate and drawn to their local team year after year.

[Tim Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of the year, so far. A beautiful examination of the way football intertwines with life, with all the heartbreak and jubilation it brings. With the added benefit of being set in A Fine City.

[Jack O’Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌟

A really lovely, warming book. Wonderfully captures the deeper meaning of football, its importance for community and how it can be used to break down barriers of isolation.

Absolutely loved the structure of this, so wonderfully clever. I wonder if it could have lent into that even more - some chapters felt too removed from that setting but I don’t know if that’s because I was longing for this to lean into more of a theatre/play production where we never leave the stadium.

Lovely and sweet, just felt like it could have pushed it a little bit more.

[Sukanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Brilliant. Moving.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a football fan at all, but I was really drawn to this book, and my curiosity paid off. A beautifully written novel that captured how central this sport is to so many people’s lives. I felt like I knew the characters from the first chapter, and they will stay with me for a while.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

see StoryGraph

[Alex Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

A warming insight into the ups and down of the rituals of following a football team

[Karen Mace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has already jumped on to my favourites of 2025! It is beautifully written and a really impressive debut fiction that introduces characters to you that you can connect with, and you don't even need to like football to enjoy it! But I found the use of male characters and the setting of a football ground a really clever one as it explores that connection made between people sharing a common love.

The 2 characters look to football to escape their realities back home - the elderly man is caring for his ill wife at home, and the 90 minutes at football each week allow him a break. He sits next to a young man who goes to the football by himself and is dealing with his own issues on a personal level. Each chapter takes us through the season, both home and away, so there are differing perspectives from both characters and shows the highs and lows, both of being a football supporter and of being a human dealing with what life throws your way.

the author really captures the whole football experience through the eyes of a supporter - the despair and the exhilaration and how you find connection with a stranger that you sit next to, or bump into at the ground and the often awkward conversations that arise - finding it easier to talk about football than of 'life', but it all becomes part of the routine and the comfort that can bring to someone.

I loved how sensitive the author is in dealing with these male characters and it was so illuminating to see them being given a voice, especially using men of different ages, and it was quite an emotional read at times. Highly recommended!!

[Russell George · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very pleasant surprise. I’d heard the author on the WSC podcast, and was intrigued by the premise: the story of a football season as experienced by two men who sit next to each other at the game. Football has rarely been fertile ground for literature, but there’s something about the way it’s possible to set aside your personal life for those 90 minutes, surrounded by people who are often trying to do the same thing. It’s been said before, but there’s a religiosity to the whole business.

In some respects, the book is about male loneliness. The two characters, Old Man and Young Man, experience that feeling at different ends of the lifespan, but it would be unjust to say that they’re archetypes. They have some commonalities with others in their generation, but both were well drawn. But what the book does particularly well is avoid, for the most part, football cliché, which would have undermined the whole endeavour.

The writing, too, is often very good. Moments of verbosity are few and far between, allowing the book to flow easily through its short, report-length chapters. I was left with the sense of an author who will get even better.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend it. It was great to see supporting a football club, and the match-going experience, screened through such an astute and interesting novel.

[Amy Carver · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up… Despite being an interesting and genuine concept this was frequently overwritten. At times the narrative voice seemed to be more concerned with staying committed to the ‘wider themes’ of the book, rather than communicating those preoccupations through a more fully realised depiction of the characters’ inner lives. As a result, the internal monologues became a bit heavy-handed, like they were laboriously working to the “realisations” that the book builds to… I.e., that we are all lonely; nothing matters; enjoy the small things (like your bad football team winning) etc. It was a bit like Sally Rooney style characters + old school obsessed football fans… I don’t know if the combo was set up to succeed? Maybe football shouldn’t be over intellectualised? That’s what David Peace seems to get so well.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully crafted story written from a unique perspective. It charts the ups and downs of two season ticket holders who live completely different lives but slowly bond over a shared love of football. The young man and the old man are complex characters in their own ways but I quickly found empathy with them both, their respective problems tug at the heart strings.
You don't need to enjoy football to enjoy this incredible debut novel.

[Pete Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding debut novel dealing with loneliness, alienation, lack of meaning, mortality. Yet football and tentative human connections can - at least to some extent and for a limited time - provide mitigation and relief.

[Adrian · Rating 2 out of 5]

My heart sank when I realised this was about football. My worst nightmare. The book is swamped by football minutiae overpowering the narrative which could have been reflective and meaningful. It was just so dull in places, I nearly fell asleep

[Tim Ewins · Rating 5 out of 5]

gentle and moving

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro carino. Racconta la storia di due tifosi che, solitari per motivi differenti, vanno a vedere la propria squadra allo stadio. Con il passare delle pagine i due protagonisti entrano sempre più in confidenza, condividendo (seppur mai dicendoselo a parole) il trauma della solitudine. Il libro è diviso in 18 capitoli, uno per ogni giornata di campionato: l'idea è carina, ripresa sicuramente da successi ben più famosi (Febbre a 90), forse si allunga un pò troppo nel finale, però lo definirei sicuramente come un buon libro ed una lettura piacevole.

[Mark Chase · Rating 4 out of 5]

on the ball City...