Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "baseball"

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Can't say I love baseball. A few times I tried to watch it (and comprehend all the excitement and fuss about it) but I failed and gave it up. It did not catch my attention, and instead of getting my blood up and igniting passion in me, it lulled me to boredom.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, a 605 pages long novel (Fourth Estate, London, 2012) about baseball star Henry Skrimshander at Westish College and fates of people connected to him, is anything but that. It is a thoroughbred, full-blooded, deeply moving, beautifully written tale about dreams, hopes, ambition, forbidden love, friendship, and many more.

Chad Harbach, an American writer and an editor at n+1 New York-based literary magazine, worked on his baseball debut novel for nine years. But as if that time had no effect on it, for each year of its creating only added to its flavor and quality. The Art of Fielding is a brilliant first novel you will not want to put down. Its characters are memorable, alive, realistic, the writing is flawless and tender, the novel itself passionate, gripping and all-consuming. It is a vivid reminder of more innocent times and ages we all sometimes crave for; melancholic and sentimental it touches our hearts and minds and squeezes the juices of humanity out of us.

If you had doubts whether I liked it or not, have no doubts any more. The Art of Fielding I loved from the beginning to the end, with every hope arisen and dream broken, with every single success achieved and love fulfilled, all the way to its sad and re-conciliatory end.

The Art of Fielding is the art of writing. We should all take it in our hands, read it with open minds and big hearts and pay respect to it. If this was the only novel Chad Harbach ever wrote (I hope not), it is the novel enough to find a place for him in the annals of American literary fiction.

Advice for the filmmakers: kindly pay attention to it!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

Academic Curveball by James J. Cudney

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


After Watching Glass Shatter (still have to read it) and Father Figure, James J. Cudney is back to deliver us his third book, Academic Curveball, the first in his Braxton Campus Mysteries. And, oh boy, I’m glad he is!

There is something neat when you set a mystery story in a cozy rural area and spice it with a dead body, a possible culprit as a member of your family, a net of intrigue, an affair connected to the college's athletic program, memorable and sarcastic residents (Nana D you rock!), and a mad cliffhanger! James (or Jay as he prefers to be called) gives us all that in a right and timely manner and his rich and capturing writing style.

I don’t like baseball (which is probably a weakness of 99% Europeans) but I like Jay’s curveball. If the real game is as half as interesting, intriguing and exciting as his book is, baseball would have many more followers outside the States. As things look from my point of view, baseball will remain a nationally popular home game while Academic Curveball and Braxton Campus Mysteries will enchant the hordes of both domestic and international fans. And that is not a bad thing at all!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan