What I’ve Read: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
This is a book that’s really entirely about baseball. Sort of. It’s about baseball and it’s about people and relationships. There’s a reason it’s also received rave reviews and countless awards and mentions—it’s a really, REALLY freaking good book.
On the surface, it’s not that complex. It’s the story of a surprisingly talented college-aged baseball player, his roommate, his older mentor and a college president and his daughter. The majority of the action takes place on the baseball field, in the dorms or in the president’s living quarters. It feels like a coming-of-age book in a lot of ways, but it’s not just that. Where another writer may have taken a sardonic, overly intellectual eye to this story, Harbach was content to make it warm and earnest and that’s why I couldn’t put it down for two days straight.
After finishing this book, I knew that I wasn’t likely to read another like it for some time and I was surprised to find myself depressed by the thought. I’ve read several really good books in the past few months, but this one stands out as that rare example of something that deserves the hype, but never seemed engineered specifically to generate it. For that reason alone, I fully excuse the few problems I had with it (errant storylines that never got wrapped up, characters that seemed important but weren’t).
If you’re looking for a great novel, or maybe a new selection for your book club, I’d highly recommend taking a look at this!
Have you read this book? What did you think?
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