I haven't read David Peace before, but he has a huge reputation. This is a football novel. Peace wrote a novelisation of the life of the legendary Brian Clough, The Damned United, which was filmed. This is a novelisation of the life of Bill Shankly, the near-mythical Liverpool manager responsible for turning the failed club into the giant who ruled British and European football through the 1970s. It's an epic novel, 720 pages, and is written in a repetitive, incantatory style, almost prose poetry. Whole sections of the novel are repeated in parts, but it is a compelling and fast paced narrative. I guess you'd need to be a football fan, as Shankly would mean nothing to you if you weren't, and the many long descriptions of on-field action would be unendurable. I think it's a terrific book, truly original in its style, powerful and constantly surprising.