I saw myself as an entertainer and I saw this penalty as a reflection of my personality. I wanted to give the fans something new to see, to create something that would get them talking." Il rigore di Panenka" (in Italian). Storie di Calcio. Archived from the original on 21 May 2016 . Retrieved 9 May 2016. Leonard and Hungry Paul is one of my favourite reads of this year, so I was keen to read Hession's sophomore novel.

Now aged 50, Joseph (Panenka’s) previously estranged daughter Marie-Therese has moved in with her 7 year-old son Arthur, after the break-up of her own marriage to Vincent. Vincent runs a bar in the town, one light on customers other than some Cheers-like ruminating regulars, including Panenka. Panenka himself as the novel opens is suffering from blinding headaches, which he learns have a serious cause, but a few days after his diagnosis meet a new resident of the town, Esther, who has come to Seneca to escape her own past (and who, almost uniquely, has no idea who Joseph did nor of his infamy) and the two build a close friendship.His name was Joseph, but for years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story.”

Joseph (Panenka), Marie-Thérèse, Arthur and Esther. Four individuals. Four lives. Panenka is their story.Panenka is what he is called but his name is Joseph and for over 25 years he had to live with a mistake that not only made his team lose the game but set a domino effect of several losses for him -- his family, identity, and all his closest relationships. The dialogue is often more like soliloquy, especially towards the end (“Chapter 28: Proverbs”), as the characters begin to break the fourth wall. “When you’re consumed with the effort of processing internal pain… It’s like holding your breath under water: you realise that you need to breathe but if you breathe at the wrong time, you drown,” Panenka tells his new friend Esther. Her reply includes this announcement: “The future turns out to be a kite crashed in the sand.” When Panenka finds at the book’s opening that his blinding headaches (which he calls the iron mask) are harbingers of a much more serious issue he resolves not to burden his family with the details (not least as Marie-Therese is talking about , or his friends (a small and eccentric group he meets at a nearby bar) or a 40 something hairdresser with who he forges a burgeoning relationship built around mutual identification in a shared sense of past disillusionment.