Gold Hardcover – 7 Jun. 2012

Kate and Zoe are training for the 2012 London Olympics. This will be the last chance they have to compete as they are both in their early thirties and reaching retirement (from professional sport) age. They met young and have the same coach, Tom, who has worked tirelessly to ensure that these two women achieve the best out of their bodies. Kate and Zoe are friends, they are rivals. The book is about whether their biggest rivalry is on the track, racing against each other on their bikes, or off the track. Is it only about sport? Or is it about family? Love? Kate's husband Jack? Or their daughter Sophie?Apart from a short prologue and epilogue this book takes place over just a few days (with several flashbacks, obviously). The attention to detail necessary to allow the whole story to unfold in this time span is phenomenal. And yet not one page, paragraph or sentence is boring.Both female characters are complete with personality traits, flaws and irritations. Both are one hundred per cent credible and likable. I found myself rooting for both of them, stuck in the horrible position Tom (the coach) is in when he knows only one of them can win. The ending for me was enormously satisfying.I don't know much about professional sports and even less about cycling. Assuming that Cleave has done his homework, I feel I know a lot more now. Another major element of the book was Sophie's illness. This was tough to read at times, but equally you want to know what is going to happen next. At the end of the novel Cleave pays tribute to the real athletes of the Olympics, "May their victories be remembered, and their characters celebrated, forever." and to The Great Ormond Street Hospital for allowing him to do research there. "Caring for sick children is the Olympics of parenting."I would strongly urge anyone to read this thrilling and pacy, yet sensitive and heart-warming, book.

I enjoyed this book, for the most part - Chris Cleave is very good at ramping up the emotion and he also has a lovely turn of phrase, describing common things in unusual ways. I definitely wasn't bored and it was fascinating getting a glimpse inside this driven, obsessive world - unlike other readers I didn't feel the book was too 'sports heavy' and I felt he wove the information about cycling seamlessly into the narrative.However, what tends to grate on me about Chris Cleave's books in general is a sense that they seem a bit calculated and contrived. He is good at picking a 'now' topic and putting it out there at just the right time. Every character has a heartrending situation to deal with - whether a poorly child (in my opinion the most heart breaking aspect of the book) or a dead brother or mental health problems. It reads a bit like an X Factor list of sob stories. I know this is the stuff of fiction and I can't really put my finger on why it annoys me, but it does. I think the author is capable of much more than he has shown us in The Other Hand, Incendiary and now Gold - my feeling is that he needs to trust himself to fill a story without resorting to 'drama of the week' tactics. Just my opinion though.

This story is set in the world of olympic track cycling and certainly had a lot of authentic detail around the regimes of the track and the diets and training of elite athletes. The story was nicely paced and featured a number of viewpoints of the main characters, which gave different nuances to the same story. It was very much a character driven novel and had a lot of back story interwoven throughout, which was used to throw light on the characters' pasts and therefore to explain why they were they way they were now. Unfortunately, I could not feel particulary sympathetic towards them. It is a measure of the quality of writing though, that I continued to be interested enough to keep reading whilst not liking the characters that much. I don't want to give any spoilers but would say that when I finished the book, I thought of how well it good translate to a movie, with a typical 'Hollywood' ending. I would have preferred a less neat finish, that would somehow have been more realistic. Although set in the world of cycling, the plot and story could have been set in virtually any competitive sport where indivuals are striving for their personal racing best - track, swimming, tennis, golf, skiing... the list could go on. Read the book and then think about what sport could have been used!