The season

Garner (Everywhere I Look) reflects on masculinity and the passage of time in this tender if somewhat opaque chronicle of the season she spent watching her grandson play Australian football. Feeling adrift in her writing, Garner asked her 15-year-old grandson Amby if she could accompany him to his practices. Amby had been playing "footy" since he was a "tubby little eight-year-old" but had since grown into a six-foot tall, broad-shouldered young man. "All my life I've fought men, lived under their regimes," Garner writes, but the experience of becoming a grandmother to boys helped her "see their delicacy, their fragility." With a notebook in hand, Garner hovers at a distance from the on-field action, capturing Amby's physical prowess with wonder even as the "nana" in her struggles to tamp down her fear of injury. She tinges the memoir with a hint of sadness, aware, at 80, that as her grandchildren blossom, time is exerting the opposite effect on her. Interspersed throughout are accounts of Garner watching Australian football on TV, which lack the emotional heft of the other chapters. Furthermore, American readers unfamiliar with the sport are left to tread water. It adds up to a moving but uneven reading experience. Agent: David Forrer, InkWell Management. (Sept.)

The sporting life. Australian writer Garner reflects on aging, family, boyhood, and manhood in a bittersweet memoir centered on her relationship with Amby, her youngest grandchild, a 15-year-old member of an Under-16 Australian football team. Wanting to be a "silent witness" to his life, she decides to write a book about football, a sport she admits having no clue about. She attends training sessions and games, watches matches on television with Amby, and thinks about what football means to these teenagers as they become men. They seem so fragile--young and slender, compared with the professional players they watch on television. But as she chronicles Amby's development, month by month, she sees him changing. "The chunky child I used to carry on my hip! Where has he gone?" she asks herself. "Where have theyears gone?" He becomes a strong player, with a powerful, well-aimed kick and a healthy dose of aggression. Tackling, he tells her, "is the most cathartic part of the whole game." Not surprisingly, she brings to the games some anxiety about possible injury; often Amby leaves the field sporting bloody knees and wakes up sore the next day. But he's devoted to his team, to his coach, and to competition. More than the particulars of the game, Garner observes that football serves as "an ancient common language between strangers" and a strong source of bonding for men. During the year, Garner suffers two bouts of Covid-19 and periodic bouts of depression. At 80, she feels old--her hearing is going, her eyesight, too; she feels on the periphery of her family's life, a nuisance and a bore. Amby's growing strength contrasts, sadly, with her increasing sense of diminishment. A tender reminiscence, fueled by love, tempered by loss. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.