The Art Of Fielding

July 25, 2011
Recalling works as disparate as Chaim Potok's The Chosen, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, and Scott Lasser's Battle Creek, Harbach's big-hearted and defiantly old-fashioned debut demonstrates the rippling effects of a single baseball gone awry. When college shortstop phenom Henry Skrimshander accidentally beans teammate Owen Dunne with a misplaced throw, it starts a chain reaction on the campus of Westish College, "that little school in the crook of the baseball glove that is Wisconsin." Owen is solicitously visited in the hospital by school president Guert Affenlight, a widower, who falls in love with the seductive gay student, a "serious breech of professional conduct" that sends potentially devastating ripples through the school. Affenlight's daughter, Pella, after a failed marriage in San Francisco, returns to become part of a love triangle with Henry and Mike Schwartz, the team captain and Henry's unofficial mentor. And just when Henry's hopes of playing for the St. Louis Cardinals come within reach, he suffers a crisis of confidence, even as his team makes a rousing run at the championship. Through it all, Henry finds inspiration in the often philosophically tinged teachings found in The Art of Fielding ("Death is the sanction of all that the athlete does"), by a fictional retired shortstop. Harbach manages incisive characterizations of his five main players, even as his narrative, overlong and prone to affectation, tests the reader's patience.

January 30, 2012
Harbach’s popular debut is part baseball novel, part campus satire, part exploration of male friendship, and part warped 21st-century love story. Juggling all of this would be a heavy burden for any narrator, and while Holter Graham can’t quite keep all the balls in the air, he does deliver an engaging performance. Graham handles Harbach’s prose gingerly, delicately threading his way through the book’s elegant descriptions of life on the baseball diamond. Additionally, Graham delivers distinct voices for Harbach’s characters, including wizardly shortstop Henry Skrimshander, college president Guert Affenlight, and Affenlight’s searching daughter, Pella. If something of the book’s grandeur is lost in the transition to audio, Graham’s narration allows listeners—from baseball novices to scholars—an opportunity to immerse themselves in the supremely alluring world of Westish College. A Little, Brown hardcover.

Holter Graham's performance of this bestselling first novel is a home run. This book is about baseball. It is about the perils, the beauties, the anguish of love--both gay and straight. It is about college and literature, especially nineteenth-century American novels. And, as for many good books, it is metaphorically about much more. Graham offers the equivalent of a full-cast production. Conversation drives this book, and Graham reproduces the interactions so realistically and effortlessly that the listener feels like a silent participant. All the major characters--male, female, young, old--have distinct and consistent voices. Between conversations, the narrative moves along at an easy, listenable pace. All in all, this book has something for everyone. R.E.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine