Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Once again Austrians dissapoint me. The title of the book promised that it would be a football-story, something I would find it quite easy to enjoy. Yet it proved to be misleading. Bloch is a fellow who was a football goalie once but who is a monteur nowadays and who gets sacked from his work. So he just goes arround, doing nothing in particular, nobody really cares about him anymore. He tries to make contact to people he used to know but they don`t have interest for Bloch anymore. So he strangles a woman without any reason, goes to a town near the border where nobody needs him as well. The main morale of the novel is found at the end of the book when Bloch watches a game of football and the trick for a goalie to be successful is shown - you have to remain calm and make the striker shoot the ball into your hands when he`s taking a penalty shot. Peter Handke didn`t hit the goal with me, I would rather say that he shoots like Oleg Blagonadezhdin (a Latvian playe most notorious for hitting pigeons more often than hitting the goal).