GOLD
BY CHRIS CLEAVE (Sceptre £16.99)
I don't know if you’ve noticed any of the publicity, but the Olympics will soon be held in London. Here to prove that even literary fiction is marking the event is Chris Cleave’s new novel - a tale of three everyday British cycling champions as they prepare for their final games. Two of these three, Kate and Jack, are married to each other. The third, Zoe, is emphatically single - she’s also the most famous, the face of a massive Perrier campaign and an apparent cert for gold.
Their stories dot back and forward from the present to 1999, when the three first raced each other at the Manchester velodrome and when they first met the gnarled coach they still share.
It’s notoriously difficult to write about sport from the inside but Cleave just about succeeds. However, he can’t overcome a greater problem - that it’s even more difficult to make sport a compelling or engaging read.
To compensate, Cleave beefs up the emotional content of the Kate-Jack-Zoe triangle. He also gives Kate and Jack’s young daughter Sophie leukemia. Sophie is on chemotherapy and spends the novel vomiting at home or in intensive care.
So this novel poses three questions. Which of the three cyclists will make it to London 2012? Will Sophie die? And how cheaply manipulative and horrible can a sick-kid sub-plot get?
