"Gold" by Chris Cleave

 

Zoe and Kate are Olympic-standard cyclists, rivals on the track, and for the affections of Jack, another Olympic cyclist. Tom is their coach. Sophie, Kate and Jack's little daughter, is suffering from her second bout of leukaemia. Will Zoe or Kate make it to the London Olympics? Will Sophie die? Will Zoe self-destruct? This tear-jerking story chronicles the dedication, the obsession, and the reality behind sporting success.

It is told in the past tense and in the third person from the shifting narrative viewpoint of each of the five main characters. The author has clearly done a huge amount of research (sometimes it showed) both into cycling and leukaemia. The plot is carefully structured with some nice foreshadowing. There is a certain sense of artificiality about the way the characters have been opposed: Zoe (a very extreme character) and Kate are opposite sides of a coin, Tom is the stereotypical wise old man, Jack the flip-flopping husband. Nevertheless, it was genuinely tense and I did not know which way the plot was going to twist and there were two occasions when I really had a lump in my throat and any writing powerful enough to move this cynical old critic must have something. It punched. Otherwise, it was very much in the mainstream of contemporary novels. 

Selected quotes:

Page numbers for the 2013 Sceptre paperback edition

• "This new breed of men with cyclonic souls that sucked like Dysons and never needed their bag changing in order to keep on and on sucking." (p 57)
• "Time and space were training wheels on a bike - you were pretty limited until you could ride without them." (p 61)
• "This was just one of those unfortunate moments in life, like going to dinner parties. You didn't need to enjoy it to survive it." (p 67)
• "He waved the idea away. You get to a certain age and kindnesses become these invisible flies to be swatted." (p 70)
• "There were multiple protocols to treat leukaemia, but the only known cure for being eight was being nine." (p 170)
• "Phil Collins' lyrics held meaning the way a pocket mirror held the moon." (p 262) It's a great phrase but I'm not certain if it's good or bad.
• "If later really cared, it should try turning up at places sooner." (p 281)
• "She and time were oil and vinegar shaken up and left to stand." (p 285)
• "This was the nature of time: it was a wide, elegant and gently descending spiral staircase whose last dozen steps were unexpectedly rotten." (p 345)
• "The anaesthesia had stilled even the echo of character that her face showed in sleep." (p 371)

My overall reaction is that it is a great page-turning novel creating genuine emotional involvement so I can't deny it five stars but there was a slight feeling of disappointment that there wasn't something a little bit more to it. I'm hard to please!

Chris Cleave also wrote The Other Hand

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God