{"id":201086,"date":"2025-04-23T17:56:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T17:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/fun-and-games-by-john-patrick-mchugh-growing-up-is-hard-to-do\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T17:56:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T17:56:42","slug":"fun-and-games-by-john-patrick-mchugh-growing-up-is-hard-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=201086","title":{"rendered":"Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh: Growing up is hard to do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-34556\" src=\"https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Fun-and-Games-187x300.jpg\" alt=\"Cover image for Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh\" width=\"187\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Fun-and-Games-187x300.jpg 187w, https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Fun-and-Games.jpg 312w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 187px) 100vw, 187px\"\/>The blurb for John Patrick McHugh\u2019s <em>Fun and Games<\/em> came garlanded with praise from a slew of starry Irish literary names, not least Sally Rooney. I often wonder how that might feel for a writer; a kind of euphoric anxiety, perhaps. Set in the summer of 2009, McHugh\u2019s novel follows seventeen-year-old John and his footballing mates, all four determined to play for their club in the Championship.<\/p>\n<p><em>Life careened into you and there was nothing you could do about it and so what was the point? Life, he wrote in a notebook, was pointless! He wrote: I hate my family and I hate my life! <\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Even before his mother inadvertently texted a picture of her breasts to the wrong person, becoming the talk of the Island, John spent much of his time consumed with social anxiety, second guessing his every move not least with Amber, his colleague at the hotel where he\u2019s working over the summer, definitely not his girlfriend but they seem to secretly hook up more and more. His father has moved out at his mother\u2019s request but he still relies on them both to ferry him back and forth to his job and training practice. John\u2019s thoughts are fully taken up with himself \u2013 his prospects with the team and Amber, what his friends think of him, how horrible his body is in comparison with theirs \u2013 leaving little room for his parents or his sister, about to get married, or any troubles that Amber might have. As the summer wears on, he\u2019s faced with a few home truths, coming close to thinking about other people and their problems.<\/p>\n<p><em>In his heart, John could thus argue he had protected Amber and the sanctity of them. John could feel less bad and once you begin to feel less bad, you basically have washed the error and the fault away.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I wasn\u2019t sure if I would stick with McHugh\u2019s novel at first; there are some lengthy football passages, not something I\u2019m at all interested in. That said, John\u2019s character drew me in to this funny, poignant coming-of-age story which smartly nails late adolescence with all its excruciating discomforts. Oblivious to the difficulties of everyone around him, John agonises over texts sent, replies received and not received while labouring over witticisms he plans to deliver. His parents are loving and solicitous of him yet he\u2019s only concerned with how their split will affect him. He wants Amber but looks down his nose at her, lies to his friends and endlessly self-dramatizes. It\u2019s a tribute to McHugh\u2019s characterisation that he managed to engage my sympathy for John let alone have me rooting for him. His novel lived up to all those starry puffs for me, and its ending is a masterstroke.<\/p>\n<p>4th Estate Books: London 9780008517342 272 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-52859811-34555-68092585194ab\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/?ver=14.5#blog_id=52859811&amp;post_id=34555&amp;origin=alifeinbooks.co.uk&amp;obj_id=52859811-34555-68092585194ab\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-52859811-34555-68092585194ab\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><a class=\"sd-link-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The blurb for John Patrick McHugh\u2019s Fun and Games came garlanded with praise from a slew of starry Irish literary names, not least Sally Rooney. I often wonder how that might feel for a writer; a kind of euphoric anxiety, perhaps. Set in the summer of 2009, McHugh\u2019s novel follows seventeen-year-old John and his footballing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[77347,77348,1304,55103,1234,12667,1338,38877,3201,55105,77349,1613],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-201086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-4th-estate-books","tag-coming-of-age-novel","tag-fun","tag-fun-and-games","tag-games","tag-growing","tag-hard","tag-irish-fiction","tag-john","tag-john-patrick-mchugh","tag-mchugh","tag-patrick"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh: Growing up is hard to do - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=201086\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh: Growing up is hard to do - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The blurb for John Patrick McHugh\u2019s Fun and Games came garlanded with praise from a slew of starry Irish literary names, not least Sally Rooney. 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