The Sidekick

by Benjamin Markovits

ONE OF THIS WEEK'S BEST NOVELS OF 2022
The perfect novel for fans of The Last Dance, Hoop Dreams and Winning Time

'Exquisite. . . Warm, humane, and tragic.' JONATHAN LETHEM

At his high school basketball try-outs, nerdy sports-obsessed Brian Blum meets new kid Marcus
Hayes. As a sportswriter, Brian spends the following twenty years tracking his friends' superstar NBA
career. But when Marcus mounts his last dance comeback, after a couple of years out of the game,
both men must face the tensions of their unlikely dynamic, and the disappointments of getting
older.

'There is something so compelling about the questions of whether these two friends, despite their
fraught history and hefty egos, will rekindle a genuine connection . . . you'll want to know how the
game turns out.' TLS

'Compelling and emotionally resonant.' Spectator

'Contemporary fiction's best kept secret . . . It's gratifying to observe someone with a large amount
of specific knowledge not only imparting that expertise, but unlocking some deeper meaning within
it, like a top sports star working their magic.' Sunday Business Post

Genres: Fiction

412 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 31, 2022

Reviews

[Tom Mooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great sports novel, of which there are very few. Scratch that, it's more accurate to say this is an excellent novel, that happens to be about sports. Markovits has a style that's easy to quickly engage with, that makes you sympathise with characters who are all imperfect, are never 100% likable, yet you understand and root for them; what I'm saying is, they're real. It's got a ring of Elizabeth Strout or Nickolas Butler about it, in many ways.

This is a book about basketball, about greatness, about living a life in the shadow of that greatness. It tackles identity, privilege, race and family. But above all, it's a book about the fading sheen of youth. About what is left in life when all you expected from it has either happened or passed you by. I absolutely loved it.

[Shanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit too heavy on the detailed basketball plays and sports writing for my liking but still a great read worth your time.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have zero interest in basketball and this is a book about basketball, but it needs emphasising that the reader definitely does NOT need to be interested in or know anything about basketball to enjoy this insightful novel which at its heart is about friendship, fame, ageing, race and identity – and which happens to be centred around basketball. It could have been any sport or activity to have the same emotional impact. And I admit that my eyes glazed over at the descriptions of some of the games. All those technical terms. All those game plays. But that’s a minor quibble. Two boys, Jewish Brian Blum and black Marcus Hayes develop a friendship of a sort when they get onto their high school basketball team. Marcus soon becomes the team’s star whilst Brian is far less talented. When Marcus’ single mother moves away, Marcus moves in to Brian’s house so that he can continue with his rise to basketball celebrity. Brian becomes a sportswriter and always feels himself to be in Marcus’s shadow – which indeed he is. How this fraught relationship plays out over the decades is both compelling and convincing and I very much enjoyed it.

[Nette · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sidekick takes you from the beginning of what some might say is a friendship to the current state of things as they are happening. It started well, the funeral of the Coach was where it took a turning point. It is then we see that this is not going to be a story of a sidekick by any means, you feel the issues of jealousy that are not dealt with at the time and the sportswriter is more of just someone with a grudge. It deals with other heavy topics like what took place in the frat house and male health with the whole cancer scare. The issues of neediness are intense, from the failed kiss at the bar to the "sort of" relationship with the volleyball player, which is more disturbing than awkward, I almost didn't finish the book.

[Aria Harlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a much more emotive read than I thought it would be. I liked the writing, the narrative was enaging and the characters were well developed and as unlikeable some were, the others were really likeable. The tension is the book was handled perfectly and left me brethless at times with the emotive and vivid descriptions/imagery.
I really enjoyed it,

[Stuart Shiffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Markovits has written several books that are set in Austin Texas. In addition he enjoys sports themes in other of his works. The two elements are combined in this story of two boys who grow to adults with basketball as part of their lives. The story is compelling and the writing extremely authentic.

[David Twine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this but I'm not sure it will have universal appeal. I really got into the excitement of the basketball - a game I know very little about. He writes so well about the tactics and tension that I will now seek out the local team. The book is mostly about the narrator's "sidekick" relationship with his childhood friend who becomes a star, but it's the basketball that rocks.

[Scott Gardner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set around Basketball , the book is about Jealously , how living in someone else's shadow can leave scars you don't even know exist

[Liam Power · Rating 3 out of 5]

Refreshing to read a nuanced sports fiction book. Started strongly but waned a bit in the second half. A worthy effort and worth sticking with!

[Astrid Faelens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik vond het goed maar om vlot door te kunnen lezen was het doorspekt met technisch jargon.

[Dec · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always grim when the Spectator says It’s good but this was the closest cousin to the sportswriter by Ford I could think of.

[Isabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5

Soms werden gedachten goed verwoord, maar overal is het een traag boek waarvan ik het plot nog steeds niet ontdekt heb

Al met al , niet te beuken

[Silvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5/5

"Maybe this is my chance, maybe I can start again. These are the thoughts that make your heart race at three a.m."

Brian Blum and Marcus Hayes meet in high school, when they join the basketball team. Brian is a slightly overweight nerd with an obsession for basketball and an iron will, Marcus is the most talented player the world has seen in a while.
The two become sort of friends, their lives bonded to each other, bringing them to a different kind of success: Marcus an NBA star player, Brian the sport journalist writing about his friend's life.
But it's not all gold what shines.
This is a novel about regrets, second chances, missing opportunities, and overall becoming old and coming to terms with a life that is not as shining shining as it was before.

I really liked it. I didn't give it 4 stars only because I found the book super technical at times, but I recommend it if you like this sort of stories and you like basketball.

"Somehow I always end up being the problem."

[Scott Cumming · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sidekick is classic American fiction at its best.

Brian Blum and Marcus Hayes were high school best friends who made the Junior Varsity basketball team together and went on to the University of Texas as basketball player and journalism major respectively. Told in a past and present dual narrative, we see Brian and Marcus spark up an almost uneasy friendship before devolving into little more than distant colleagues as Marcus plans an NBA comeback after three years of retirement. He picks Brian as the one to chronicle the comeback, but things seem too far gone between the pair by this time.

This is a rich, engaging novel bouncing between the hope of youth and the onset of mid-thirties ennui as we watch the two characters grow into who they have become. Relationships are examined subtly based on wealth, race, media coverage and what it means to be great against somebody merely mediocre.

The nonpersonal media coverage of Marcus seems exceptional until you really think about it and you only see stories of this kind when it is absolutely necessary or somebody feels the need to speak out on something within their life. The dressing room politics always guessed at, but never clearly stated.

This is a book that doesn't rely on macguffins and plot wizardry instead showing us a relationship between two men and letting us decide for ourselves what is going on here. There are no goodies or baddies and in some ways the detachment between the two could be a natural thing, if they weren't so far in the same orbit as one another.

This is one I picked up on a whim at the library, so I've added another excellent author to my list of those I have to read, but Markovits has become a priority based on the sheer lack of pretention within this novel, which allows you to make your own adult decisions about why things are happening as they are.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a very enjoyable read. Generally, when looking for my next read, I'm open-minded and just choose whatever seems good or is next in my queue. But I picked up this book because it met much narrower criteria. I wanted something well-written (of course), with an educated, male protagonist. I just felt like something very ordinary and relatable. I also found the book through an unusual means - browsing the Faber catalogue online. Starting with a publisher is an underappreciated approach to finding books, I think, because even if they're mostly owned by the same two companies, different imprints have different aesthetics. I knew Faber's fiction tends to be literary, so I didn't have to worry about stumbling into stuff that didn't have nice prose.

And the book? Well, it scratched the itch. It was mostly well-written, apart from some occasionally sticky patches (the author tries an ellipsis thing a few times that didn't work at all for me), with energetic prose. The characters are engaging and well-drawn and the plotting is very clever. I cared, but I was never over-invested or impatient for the next bit of news.

I don't know anything about basketball, but found it easy to let the technical descriptions of games wash over me. It's like the nautical stuff in the Hornblower books - atmospheric but not crucial to your enjoyment.

[Sadhbh Goodhue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Benjamin Markovits as a rule. His characters are always rich and engaging, in this book no less than previous. However more than 50% of this book is given over to laborious descriptions of imagined basketball matches with a level of detail that’s meaningless unless you really know your basketball - which I don’t. So it’s a frustrating read to be honest and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a basketball nerd in the extreme. I’ll look forward to his next book nonetheless. Just hope it’s not about a sports player.