In Sidelines (Allen and Unwin 2024), author Karen Viggers perfectly encapsulates the adolescent angst of growing up, finding your identity, making friends and learning how to deal with enemies, in tandem with the parent wars that occur on the sidelines of teenage sporting matches. As in real life, the parents’ behaviour is often much worse than that of their children, with parents jockeying for attention and achievements vicariously through their children by cosying up to the coaches or team managers and using various social occasions to ensure their own child has the best possible opportunity.
Readers who love the family dynamics explored in novels by Liane Moriarty will enjoy Viggers’ attention to the minutia of daily life placed within the bigger picture of relationships both on and off the field, within families and within larger social networks.
The book opens with a shocking on-field incident that has paramedics wondering what kind of children’s sporting accident could possibly cause such a terrible injury. The novel then takes us back in time to everything that has led to that day.
The story features three main families. Thirteen-year-old twins Audrey and Alex are both skilled athletes playing in a suburban junior soccer team. Their father Ben projects his own thwarted football success onto his children, and their mother Jonica is worried about injuries, rivalries, pressure (from her husband and also other parents) and potential coaching bias, especially regarding Audrey, who as a girl, has to produce higher achievements just to be on a level playing field with the boys. The only other girl on the team, Katerina, appears to be a rough and gritty player, with no compunctions about doing whatever is necessary to get ahead. Her mother Carmen manages the team and is so busy seeking opportunities for Katerina to shine that she fails to notice what else is going on in her daughter’s life. When the extremely talented Griffin arrives out of the blue, with his belligerent and cocky father, the whole team is put under extra pressure to perform.
Sidelines is easy to read, with authentic dialogue. Any reader who is a parent, teacher or coach involved in Saturday sport will immediately relate to the high stakes pressure Viggers places on her characters and will probably recognise parents or junior players from their own past involvement. The author is very good at getting to the heart of the how and why of people’s motivations, their subsequent actions, and the sometimes life-changing results. Team sport is supposed to be fun, a diversion from the stresses of school and a place where people come together. But too often, as Sidelines demonstrates, it becomes a battlefield rather than a playing field, with very real and sometimes momentous consequences. This novel is full of drama and intense competition but also focuses on teen romance, anxiety, self-doubt and disturbing behaviour.