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. Crace follows the team to the dimmest recesses of this country and Europe; he collects mountains of unmemorable memorabilia; he neglects his family in order to catch an obscure game on TV. He also hugely over-identifies himself with the club: when, in a chance meeting with novelist Jim Crace, he discovers they are distantly related, he enjoys his new found Jewishness primarily because it further ties him to Spurs, the most Hebrew of football institutions. Most telling of all, given what we come to learn about his fluctuating mental health, he measures the remainder of his life by the numbers of future football seasons he's likely to see.

exposes the self-delusion, moral gymnastics and nervous tics that are the lot of any football fan following a team in the modern game. It also vividly, and stoically, describes the plight of those blighted by the black dog. Only one thing prevents the book from being truly lovable, and that is the fact that Crace, in the long spells when he is clear of his clinical depression, is still a bit of a misery.