A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke

Ronald Reng
2011

When someone commits suicide, whether they are well-known or not, there are a few phrases that I hear repeated by many people: "How selfish!" and "They took the easy way out" being two of the most common.

Personally, I have never seen suicide as a selfish act, but it is something that I have never understood. It makes me uncomfortable. This confusion was heightened in November 2011 when Gary Speed, the manager of the Welsh national football team, took his own life.

His death had echoes of Robert Enke's. In 2009, Enke was 32. He was a goalkeeper in glorious form, having played for top European clubs like Benfica, Barcelona and Hannover 96. He seemed to have it all; a happy family life, good friends and the very real possibility that he was going to represent Germany as their first choice 'keeper in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Unfortunately, this wasn't to be. In November 2009, Robert Enke stepped out in front of a high speed train and was killed instantly.

A Life Too Short is written by Ronald Reng, a sports journalist and personal friend of Robert Enke. Enke often talked to Reng about the two of them writing Enke's life story one day; Reng was left to write it on his own.

Reng's language is beautiful (credit must be given to translator, Shaun Whiteside). In his book, he presents Robert Enke's life with frank honesty and shows Robert to be a genuinely nice, shy and loving young man. His love for his wife Teresa is shown strongly and we as readers follow Robert's life, both personally and professionally.

We see Robert's stints of crippling clinical depression. This is not nice to read. Robert found it difficult to get out of bed, to make decisions, to play football. He constantly felt that he was letting people down, even when he was doing well.

In his depressive states, it is genuinely heart-breaking to read. To read about such a loving, kind man struggling to function is horrifying. Yet Robert decided he would hide his illness to the world. He felt that he could not be allowed to continue being a professional footballer and role-model if people knew of his "weakness". This idea that mental health issues should be ignored is all too common.

This book should be read by as many people as possible. It helps to allow readers to understand about an illness that is massively misunderstood and looked at unfairly. It is a sports biography but can be enjoyed by people who don't enjoy football. It is a book about human nature, and can bring a new view about depression to everyone. It would be fitting if Robert Enke's tragic passing could have a positive effect on other sufferers.

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline
2011

Picture the scene: It's 2044 and the world is nearing total destruction. Resources are scarce, while recessions and overpopulation mean that very few people have money and many live in "stacks" (literally stacks of caravans piled on top of each other). The outlook is very bleak indeed. There is only one thing that takes people away from this scene.

OASIS is the huge online multiplayer game where most of Ready Player One is set. It is a virtual reality world in which users can choose their own avatars to look and sound how they want, while they can travel to thousands of different worlds; users can travel in a flying Delorean to the Star Wars galaxy, or to play Quidditch in another. OASIS is the place where people escape their dying world and create their own.

This is how life is lived until the creator of OASIS, James Halliday dies, leaving his vast fortune in his will to whoever can find it. The catch is, he has hidden it within OASIS - and he's hidden it well. The novel follows the protagonist Parzival (real-world name: Wade Watts)'s attempt to find the treasure, along with thousands of others.

The novel is fantastically addictive. The quest for the "Easter Egg" is as much the readers' as it is Parzival's. Within a few chapters, I found myself falling easily into the language of the book (words such as "gunters" became so familiar, it's almost disappointing that they aren't real). With each chapter, I needed Parzival to solve each puzzle put before him. His encounters with fellow OASIS users, in particularly Art3mis, make him a particularly likeable protagonist, while Cline's liberal referencing of 1980s popular culture create a fun, inclusive atmosphere.

Everything about this novel is geeky. However, it is so geeky, it's cool. Massively cool. Ready Player One is ridiculously readable and witty and throws it's readers into a whole new world without them taking notice. It feels as though, while reading the novel, we are in OASIS, playing as Pazival.

Ready Player One is a hugely impressive debut novel, and many writers will wish that they had written it. With a film version of the book supposedly scheduled for release in 2014, I get the feeling Ernest Cline and his work are set to become very big indeed.