But there's a flip side to non-linear storytelling. If a bad use of it is to artificially induce tension by not giving away what happens early on, it is that much more impressive to, in the first pages, give away the end of a story that will be told mostly in flashbacks—and then go on to create a genuinely suspenseful, plot-twisting, compelling narrative anyway!
Gato is being interviewed by a journalist, Paul Faustino, but the interview sections comprise only a small fraction of the book. It's mostly Gato's first-person recollections of his childhood and youth, eventually building towards that final game, and it's set both on the soccer field and deep within the forests of South America. And it's in the latter that the book really reveals itself to be not an average sports story; as has been praised so often on this blog, it's a wonderful example of how the “realistic” and fantastic can blur so closely that neither we, nor all the characters, can be sure which is which.
So trying to find out what's “real” in the story provides plenty of suspense for us readers, quite aside from the fortunes of Gato's national team. And they, too, provide their own excitement; even though we know who's going to win the final, the way things play out still manages to be somewhat of a pleasant surprise. Once the interview catches up to real time in Faustino's office, the book has more or less run its course—but there's one more plot twist still to be revealed, no easy feat in a book whose arguable climax is summarized at the top of page two.
However, that final “twist” did come off as too abrupt to be completely successful. There's somewhat of a “oh, by the way, did you happen to know that...?” where the answer, at least for the reader, is “no, no we didn't, and if we had it would have significantly colored the last several hundred pages.” Peet's next two novels actually move away from this abruptness. His second book, Tamar (non-sports related and non-fantastic) has a final twist that I thought succeeded in being not too predictable but not too out-of-the-blue. But if there's supposed to be a twist in The Penalty (a sequel to Keeper), it came off as too explicitly foreshadowed and heavy-handed.
In spite of this, Keeper is still a good example of how effective non-linear narration can be. By letting us know from the start that this is not our average sports plot, it instead invites us into a story that's memorable, bittersweet, and even—somehow—surprising.