Panenka

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And the writing is eminently quotable – some of my favourite similies included: “His usual fluency on subjects of all kinds was contracting into a narrow cycle of repetitive thoughts as he attempted to solve the problem of that cursed season by going over and over his strategy obsessively, as though trying to find the one blown bulb in a string of Christmas lights.” And “The evening played out as it always did, like a non-recurring decimal, each thought causing the next, onwards without resolution.” Part of why I enjoy Hession’s books so much is that they’re unashamedly kind and optimistic when literary fashion often veers towards the dark and nihilistic. He puts this down to a couple of influences. “Leonard and Hungry Paul in particular, is heavily influenced by coming out of a decade of reading children’s books for my kids,” he says. “What children’s books do a bit better than other fiction is they try to go beyond just saying ‘the world is a bad place’… They try and say, ‘Is there a way to be in the world, given the world is the way it is? How do I engage with the world without it overwhelming me?’… That’s something I think of in my own life and it comes out in the book.” Furthermore, unlike most artists, Hession has never fantasised about leaving his day job, never sat “dreaming of an alternative existence”. He points to a rich legacy of civil servants who wrote, people like Egyptian Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz and Flann O’Brien and Thomas Kinsella. “Civil servants are interested in things very close to what writers are interested in,” he says. “You’re interested in society, and fundamentally, the position of individuals in society… That ‘zoom in, zoom out’ type perspective of the civil servant feels very natural in novel writing. I’ve a very interesting job. I love it very much… You’re dealing with some of the marginalised people in society. It is quite grounding. But also, you’re in a position to do things about it. I believe in my country. I believe in Irish society. My interest in the civil service and my writing is to try and contribute to that... And I’m okay with writing books that fit into my life. I believe in integration of everything. I’m not really one for compartmentalising. I try to be the same in writing as I am in work as I am with my kids. I don’t feel I’m playing roles.” Like everyone else, I was charmed by Rónán Hession’s first novel which, despite being a book about kind and gentle people making their way through ordinary life events while trying not to hurt anyone, is oddly compelling. If my review makes this sound like a football novel, there is certainly that element, and I think it helped me connect more than with Leonard or Hungry Paul. But the novel is much more than that - like Leonard and Hungry Paul it is about self-effacing but fundamentally nice people - and Hession writes beautifully about quiet relationships. Esther is the first person to ask Joseph why he took a panenka and the answer is pitch perfect.

As a character, Panenka himself is different from Leonard or Hungry Paul, not as innocent, perhaps less immediately appealing. He has lived life and made mistakes, and his flaws are woven into his character. But this adds a richness and maturity to the book: for all the quirks of Panenka’s life story, he is deeply relatable and realistic. He is not a bad man, but he is far from perfect, and his complexities and struggles ring absolutely true. As his history is gradually revealed, each strand adds to the picture, and we come to understand him in a way that feels organic and meaningful. This book is delicately and expertly crafted – Hession is a storyteller in whom a reader can place absolute trust. Panenka flows along so smoothly and subtly that the writer side of my brain couldn’t help but marvel at how much work must have gone into making it all seem so effortless, while the reader side of me just revelled happily in the quiet intricacy of the story. When Panenka finds at the book’s opening that his blinding headaches (which he calls the iron mask) are harbingers of a much more serious issue he resolves not to burden his family with the details (not least as Marie-Therese is talking about , or his friends (a small and eccentric group he meets at a nearby bar) or a 40 something hairdresser with who he forges a burgeoning relationship built around mutual identification in a shared sense of past disillusionment. I remember reading Disgrace by JM Coetzee. Disgrace is a really interesting topic and it didn’t really deal with it in a way that I was expecting… Also, I had read an interview with Daniel Timofte, the guy who lost a penalty against Ireland for Romania… He hadn’t got over it. And people hadn’t let him get over it. And though he was a very talented footballer it was still the thing he was known for. The main theme of that book is life’s unfixability. I think our mentality at times is trying to fix the things in our life to allow us to move on to try and say, well, how can you move on if they’re not fixable? of the best and worst Panenkas ever". Planet Football. 3 June 2020. Archived from the original on 31 December 2017 . Retrieved 23 September 2020.

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His daughter, Marie-Therese and her seven-year-old son, Arthur, came to live with him, following her separation from the boy's father. If, like me, you have absolutely no knowledge of football, Rónán Hession provides the reader with a definition of the term Panenka at the very beginning of the book – If you object to books in which not much happens, this is not for you (though if you want happening, read the news). Nice people try hard and things get a bit better. Hession’s project, across both books, is admirable and interesting: are goodness and kindness in ordinary life enough to sustain a novel? It’s obvious that the answer should be yes, and in Leonard and Hungry Paul it was.

Unfortunately, this novel was not that engaging, I was bored and I ended up not caring much about any of the characters who peppered this short novel. I like novels about ordinary people with ordinary lives - this novel is that. But something was missing. Hession affords chapters to several characters, some very loosely connected with Joseph, aka Panenka - a former Seneca FC footballer, infamous for missing a penalty shot some twenty-five years ago, that would have promoted the football club in the first division. This one failure has affected Panenka's life trajectory, he's become even more closed-off, pushed away his wife and daughter and became a mystery, even to his few so-called friends of his. To give him credit though, I can't deny that it's much more marketable the way that it is. A lot of people are going to find that release, and the ease of it, cathartic. Heaven knows, we're going to need that this year. I saw myself as an entertainer and I saw this penalty as a reflection of my personality. I wanted to give the fans something new to see, to create something that would get them talking." Joseph (Panenka), Marie-Thérèse, Arthur and Esther. Four individuals. Four lives. Panenka is their story.

The artwork on the cover is so intense. It is clearly a man but yet we cannot see beyond the brushstroke. We cannot make out the features. We cannot derive a personality. We need to make our own interpretation of what we see and this does change over the course of the book. Those headaches could provide a narrative driver, but instead the story rattles like a pinball between all those whose lives Joseph touches: daughter, friends, hairdresser and more. What the book loses in focus from this it gains in breadth, with pleasing comic crosstalk between characters, affecting moments of intimacy during a haircut, and spookily well-observed scenes of parent-child interaction. L

He’s very conscious, he says, that those who have made the most difference in his own life are self-effacing people who often go unchampioned. “I’m not naturally like that. My wife is a naturally kind person and she’s had a very good influence on me. One of the nice things about One Dublin One Book is that friends of my mother have got in touch and said, ‘I didn’t know you were a writer,’ and I’m able to send them a copy and say, ‘This is inspired by kind people like you were to me.’” But Aguero was still able to leave the club as a hero - the title win was merely postponed, and his 182 goals which he did score over 10 seasons, which include 5 Premier League titles, ensures that. Rónán Hession is an exceptional writer. He creates the most beautiful stories with the most gorgeous, yet ordinary, characters and, with a stroke of a pen, captures the reader and immerses them completely into his world. In Panenka, each character has its own distinct role, all creating a picture-perfect cast for the scene in hand. Simplicity is key. Subtlety is important. There is nothing, or no-one, loud or brash looking for your undivided attention over another. Building relationships and trust are very strong themes running through the book, with a human vulnerability of exposing feelings to others a very central element.This novel is set in an the unfashionable town of Seneca in an unnamed country – the town and team’s name representing the stoicism that underlies the novel. Lionel Messi's Panenka wins it for PSG after RB Leipzig threaten upset". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021 . Retrieved 20 October 2021.

In football, a penalty technique in which the taker chips the ball artfully into the centre of the goal, counting on the likelihood that the goalkeeper will have dived to either side’ Tom Bryant (31 October 2007). "Football - Knowledge: the footballers who have moves named after them". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 December 2016 . Retrieved 12 December 2016. Panenka, his next book, has football in it. It’s a moving story about a retired footballer grappling with a sense of failure. What inspired it? “I remember reading Disgrace by JM Coetzee,” he says. “Disgrace is a really interesting topic and it didn’t really deal with it in a way that I was expecting… Also, I had read an interview with Daniel Timofte, the guy who lost a penalty against Ireland for Romania… He hadn’t got over it. And people hadn’t let him get over it. And though he was a very talented footballer it was still the thing he was known for. The main theme of that book is life’s unfixability. I think our mentality at times is trying to fix the things in our life to allow us to move on to try and say, well, how can you move on if they’re not fixable?” Unashamedly optimistic He makes a detour to a different barber shop one day, one he hadn’t been in before, where he meets Esther. Esther is the new owner, a gentle and caring individual. She sees into Panenka’s eyes. She sees his hurt, his pain, as also experienced by herself recently. She recognises a similar soul and listens to him, really listens to him. Together they tentatively embark on a friendship as Esther breaks down a few of Panenka’s self-imposed walls. Germany are famously kings of the penalty shoot out - or rather elfmeterschießen - having won their last 6 in major tournaments, 4 at World Cups and 2 at the Euros ( https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/deuts...) including twice against England. But their first major elfmeterschießen, and the only one in a final, was in 1976 when West Germany faced Czechoslovakia. The first 7 penalties were all scored, but Uli Hoeneß missed the eighth. That left Antonín Panenka with a chance to win the game - and the composed, almost poetic, penalty he took was such a surprise to both Sepp Maier in the German goal and to the watching millions, that it is, 45 years later, still called after him: a Panenka.Football in the UK is deeply embedded into the identity and culture of the people and the town. Every loss and win correlates to their spirit and pride for better or for worse. And for the players, this can heighten their self-worth or diminish it. a b "Antonin Panenka - the footballer Pele described as "either a genius or a madman" ". 20 June 2007. Archived from the original on 9 February 2011 . Retrieved 14 November 2010. The dialogue is often more like soliloquy, especially towards the end (“Chapter 28: Proverbs”), as the characters begin to break the fourth wall. “When you’re consumed with the effort of processing internal pain… It’s like holding your breath under water: you realise that you need to breathe but if you breathe at the wrong time, you drown,” Panenka tells his new friend Esther. Her reply includes this announcement: “The future turns out to be a kite crashed in the sand.”