Half a Team Half a Team Half a Team is a 1980 children's novel by prolific British author Michael Hardcastle. The book is the sixth in Hardcastle's series about a Junior football League and features recurring characters Nick Abel- Smith (United! 1973, Away from Home (1974) and Lester Rowan (Away from Home). The book follows the story of Abel-Smith and fellow young footballer Steve Sewell as they attempt to overcome the humiliation of being dropped from their respective teams ahead of a five-a-side tournament. Joining forces they create a new team, The Swifts, and, after overcoming a series of obstacles, including getting Steve
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing In a "New York Times" review, Joshua Cohen described the book as being "in all respects, a heresy — which is to say, Lord above, it’s a future classic." Reviewing the novel for "The Guardian", Anne Enright wrote that it "is hard to read for the best reasons: everything about it is intense and difficult and hard-won." The novel won several awards including the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The Guardian Book Club featured the novel in 2016, and