If I Don't Six Book

What is it about the Great Lakes State? In this searingly dark and funny first novel, Reid, once a lineman for the University of Michigan Wolverines, puts the college gridiron to the fire the way former Dallas Cowboy Pete Gent, once a receiver for the Michigan State Spartans, did years ago for the pros in his rollicking classic, North Dallas Forty. Reid's protagonist, Elwood Riley, like Reid himself, is a block-of-granite, working-class kid who assumes he's reached life's end zone when his high school exploits nab him a football scholarship to Michigan. But he's got brains to match his brawn, and a growing awareness of himself and beyond himself that's desperate to break free. In the locker rooms and huddles of Big College, Cash Cow, move-'em-through-the-system football, even a little awareness encroaches into rah-rah values; it sends the metaphysical penalty flags flying. What Riley sees around him is that the system stinks. Winning isn't just everything, it's the Holy Grail. His small-minded coaches will stop at nothing--steroids, humiliation, pain, abuse--to grab it, nor will his teammates (with nicknames like Napalm, what do you expect--serenity and circumspection?), and the university sees him as little more than fuel for the "Big Blue" machine on its ineffable march to the Rose Bowl. The Six of the title is a reference to both 86-ing, screwing up so you lose your scholarship, or deep-sixing, getting killed trying to hold onto it. Reid's biting prose and insider's ability to bring an outsider into the often unreal absurdity of big-time college sports will have readers alternately rooting for Riley to beat the system and rooting for him to get out alive and in one piece. It's that textured complexity that sends Six deep, elevating it to a higher number. --Jeff Silverman Read More