DEATH OF THE SOCCER GOD, fact-based fiction about race, love, and soccer

DEATH OF THE SOCCER GOD
DIMITRY ELIAS LÉGER
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A global soccer star’s epic ride to the 1950 World Cup places him in shooting distance of his dreams and his own death.

Gilbert Chevalier is a lover of life in a close and constant flirtation with death. His charms and big ambitions flood him with the sense that the world is, in fact, his. Despite his immense talents on the soccer field, his father makes him swear off the sport, a game he sees as unbecoming of a refined Haitian gentleman with a bright future ahead of him in the business sector. Gil promptly breaks this promise when he leaves the bourgeois comforts of Port-au-Prince high society and moves to the vibrant, jazz-soaked streets of Harlem to attend college. Scrimmaging in Central Park, he’s spotted by the US National Team’s coach and is recruited to play for the Americans in the 1950 World Cup in Minas Gerais, Brazil. What unravels next is the stuff of myth. Chance exchanges; secret messages smuggled across continents; lovers shuffled, scorned, and reclaimed; and a journey past the veil between our world and the afterlife. From the Caribbean, to the States, to South America and back, Gil’s journey is lush and lurid, and infused with a breathless, breakneck thrill synonymous with the world’s most popular game.

Death of the Soccer God by Dimitry Elias Legér is a roaring Pan American adventure about the unattainability of the dreams that govern our lives. Energized with the high-voltage fervor of a packed stadium, this is a story of fame and fate bursting with the vivid excitement and thrill of watching world-class athletes perform at their very best.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll give Author Léger many points for really *getting* the novel as a form's best use: novelty. Starting a story with the titular event and working back from there, we-the-readers aren't left without something novel occurring for very long at all. The factual 1950 1–0 US men's soccer victory over England, whose goal was scored by a Haitian player on the US team (a FIFA investigation determined there was no wrongdoing as all non-citizens on the US team had declared they sought citizenship though only one ever got it), has been immortalized on film and in a non-fiction book before. Author Léger's novel is the first to treat it in fiction, that a ten-minute internet search turns up anyway. I'd be interested to know if any not-Anglophone attention has ever been paid to this unusual occurrence, so please advise if you have any knowledge of the same.

But fictional Gil's life was not begun in 1950, nor did it end there. Along the way from his homeland and the privileged upbringing he had there, handsome athlete Gil falls for a firebrand who bears his child despite being his boring half-brother's fiancée, marries the daughter of a Nazi war criminal hiding in Haiti, goes to Columbia in New York City where his life-altering selection for US soccer team occurs, bums around Europe trading on his looks and his educated wit for food and lodging; rescues Miles Davis from an enraged lover's murderous intentions; and for some reason ends up in front of one of Papa Doc the dictator's firing squads. He reflects, in extremis, on this awful ending so very soom to come for him: "Given the misery and injustice around us, we cannot be indifferent. Believe me, I tried. But evil won’t let you be blissfully ignorant. Or be blissful, period. Evil means hating another person’s peace. Trust me on that one."

Gil is a great, entertaining guide through the world of 1950. He's privileged, but broke; he's mixed race but accepted into segregated high society; he's a reprobate with the self-knowledge to outrun its worst consequences. Until his luck runs out. We aren't vouchsafed the reason that happens. I suspect the cuckolded half-brother had some hand in it, but that's all my own headcanon.

We're addressed directly by Gil throughout the story. It's the reason we get gems like these: "You hate my arrogance, right? I’m among the most arrogant people you ever created. All professional athletes and artists are. Don’t you see how stubborn we have to be to make our dreams and talents come true?" and "All relationships come with asterisks. Life is an asterisk, I would soon learn." Learn he does; not much time alloted to applying his knowledge: "Even today, this dreaded day, Gil remembers with freshly boiled rage all those decisions that weren’t his, but were necessary for the family."

It's a fast-paced two hundred fortyish pages. It's never slack or slow. It's got a lot to say and it says it clearly. Well, mostly clearly, because this twenty-first century guy's eyes look at Gil's unremarked and unremarkable for the time dismissive misogyny and thinks, "well aren't *you* a caddish laddish cheater?" unlike the other people around him. Self-awareness fails us all at some point.

Knowing Joe Gaetjens, the model for Gil in this novel, met his exact end, made this fiction feel very immediate. I was fully in Gil's corner, rooting for him to get what he wanted throughout the story. I glossed over or justified his caddish treatment of the women in his life. It's a weird thing to watch one's self do, while feeling surprised displeasure at the very behavior I'd condemn in another character or real person. That's how I know Author Léger's made a fine work of art. I sought ways to excuse bad behavior and explain away what I could not excuse.

I will note with wistfulness the fact that this is among the very last books that will appear under the MCD x FSG imprint. I have had a good amount of happy reading time with the books from MCD x FSG that I've read. It was a great run, so farewell great kings of biblioholics' hearts.