Chad Harbach

A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this award-nominated tale about love, life, and baseball. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment -- to oneself and to others.

A Novel

The Art of Fielding

Erin O’Donnell

Affenlight felt something young swell up in his chest, a thudding pain interspersed with something sweet, as if he were being dragged by an oxcart through a field of clover. He blinked hard. 

A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate and the president's daughter. 75,000 first printing.

Chris Dailey

Immersive story about the hapless baseball team at the local liberal arts college in a sleepy Wisconsin town. The story centers around the brusk captain/catcher and his protege who transforms, through monumental efforts, from a skinny shortstop into a major league talent. Additionally, there's the story a late-blooming scholar, turned college president's relationships with a precocious student as well as his daughter. Starting out like Rudy or some other tropish, albeit well written, sports story, the second half of the novel turns and touches on insecurities, depression, opioid addiction, sexual ethics, betrayal, death and collection suffering...all the while maintaining a page-turners' pace. Perceptive prose and detailed emotional IQ keeps the book from falling into a cliche -- which it borders on from the get go -- and succeeds in making the reader wish they attended Westish College in Westish, WI to live among these characters.

Reiko Fu

Finally finished!
It was a fast read once I put my mind to it.

Not just a baseball book.

Dana Kraft

This book was decent, but I really only cared about a few of the plot lines. Some interesting themes, but not entirely new ones in a book centered around baseball. It could have used a bit more baseball in my opinion.

At Westish College, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for the big leagues until a routine throw goes disastrously off course. His error will upend the fates of five people. [from back cover].

Sian Wadey

Living in rural Shropshire (almost North Wales) I do not know much about baseball. In fact, I think it would be quite safe to say that I know nothing, other than I've heard of the expression 'the bottom of the ninth'. But then again that could be from somewhere else. However, upon picking this book up in the sale box at The Works (read: for next to nothing) something caught my eye. 
The blurb details the five main characters that the book focuses on: Henry Skrimshander, Mike Schwartz, Owen Dunne, Guert Affenlight and Pella Affenlight. One thing is clear, something happens that alters their lives forever. 
As I started to read this book I must admit I found it a bit much, lots of baseball lingo, all of which went straight over my head. The first character we meet is Mike, who spots Henry's talent on the field at a baseball game and recruits him to Westish College, where Mike himself is on the baseball team, and the football team and any other team you can think of. Owen is introduced as Henry's room mate. Guert Affenlight is the president of Westish College and Pella is his daughter. We are introduced to the characters gradually which I think is a stroke of genius on the author's part as it can be overwhelming to meet everyone important at once, especially when they have such complicated (albeit fantastic) names as these. 
It was a slow start for me, as the beginning mainly focuses on Schwartz and Henry and a lot of baseball. Although I found the training interesting, I struggled to visualise the baseball games as I don't know the different positions or moves. But as Guert is introduced, the story really comes into its own. Guert was probably my favourite character, he has so many layers and so much history. I would have liked to know more about his past and his relationship with Pella's mother, but we are just given a brief summary. 
All the intertwining relationships make for brilliant reading. Chad Harbach's speciality really is characters. Every single one of them was individual, unique, had many layers. They felt so real that I could meet them in the street. In fact, I would like to meet them. They had lots of different human qualities, which I myself could identify with. 
The setting and the way he described the college was also exquisite. Being at university at the moment I have some idea of college life and the author made it believable, life like and actually a place that I wanted to be. Unfortunately, after lots of googling I have discovered the college is completely fictional, although you can buy a Westish Harpooners t-shirt! 
The most clear thing is that Chad Harbach really knows his baseball. And as I read, and the team progressed, I became more and more excited for them. When it came to the final match (? game?) I was really rooting for the team. Having said that, my only negative is that I struggled to keep track of the other baseball players. Not only did they have names, they have nicknames and I could never remember which one was which. However, they're not really an integral part of the story.
There are lots of twists and turns, some I saw coming, others I definitely did not. But that is the beauty of this book. It took me almost a month to read, but for once, I really didn't mind. I enjoyed being swept away into this world and learning about the characters and the challenges they overcome. I look forward to reading more Chad Harbach in the future.

Queena Li

This is Henry Skrimshander's story.

In his third year of college, he is guaranteed a prime spot in the upcoming Major League drafts by every statistical account of his perfect season. Henry is a star. Everyone loves Henry. His team of Harpooners would lay down their lives for Henry. And yet, this is not Henry's story at all. This is a story of how the pieces of our lives are held so intricately together, often without our realizing, and the ricochet of even one misalignment can amplify destruction endlessly. Just as a spectator in baseball learns that the most interesting or important parts of the game are hardly in watching the baseball itself, readers of Harbach's expansive tale will learn to watch Henry as reflected in those around him.

Those who, unlike Henry, "never found anything in himself that was really good and pure, that wasn't double-edged, that couldn't just as easily become its opposite."

Those who, we find, are the ones we recognize as ourselves.

Mary Rose Luksha

I would like to begin this review with a little disclaimer, I have never read Moby Dick (yeah yeah, I know). The novel itself, and some of its themes, are themes in The Art of Fielding. However, since I've never read it, I wouldn't talk about that part of the book like I know anything about it. I'll talk about it sure, but I'll probably have pulled my opinion out of my butt.

That being said, The Art of Fielding is a well-structured, well-paced story that I genuinely enjoyed. I don't think it was life-changing or epic, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked the way Harbach wrote the different characters. I felt like I knew them, like they were my friends, I felt I was able to connect to their journeys - to laugh when they did, or cry with them. I can't read a book (or watch a tv show or movie) unless I can root for at least one character; in The Art of Fielding, I rooted for them all. My cheerleading actually became conflicting because sometimes (as in life) one character's fortune was deeply tied to another's misfortune. I liked that.

Baseball does figure into the story, but if you're not a fan, I would still recommend the book to you. Because baseball, like Moby Dick, is a symbol for greater things. It could easily have been another sport, or another hobby. I think mainly it was about purposefulness. There are a wide range of themes you could argue were the main focal point, but for me personally at this stage in my life, purposefulness is the one I identified with most.

Overall, The Art of Fielding was, in my opinion, well-written for its characters, timing, and complex layering of different themes and thoughts. I would certainly recommend it to everyone.

Emma Friedheim

I've been meaning to read this book for years but knew nothing more than the title, which I interpreted to mean it would be all about baseball. So the actual story (obviously broader than that, with a heavy emphasis on relationships) initially threw me. Really interesting idea, well executed, etc. but missing that spark I'm always hoping for. The characters were at once well developed and not developed enough? I just didn't connect with any of them the way it can be so fun to connect when reading fiction. Plus, and I hate to make the comparison but I read it somewhere and couldn't get it out of my head, it felt almost like a lesser Infinite Jest? As in a dummy version. I know that's unfair. But in essence due to my unrealistically high expectations for this [very good] book, I am left somewhat disappointed.

Elizabeth Moore

This was a great book! I was surprised that more review didn't mention Westish collage as a place more - the college felt to me like as much of a character in the novel as the main characters themselves. Each character's sense of value and promise was inextricably tied to their identity as a "Westish" person, although their consciousness of this fact seemed to vary from highly so, like Schwartzy and Guert, to almost oblivious to the fact, as Henry often was. Although he didn't see it, it was quite obvious as a reader that Henry's self-doubt and subsequent downward spiral happened almost in tandem with his realization that he was about to be moving far away from Westish college, and early at that. Similarly, it took a "coming home" to Westish to bring Pella pack to life. Characters outside of the baseball team, the main characters themselves, and those characters' families were nearly non-existent, even though you think of a college as a place swarming with people. I really liked Harbach's decision as an author to remove the "noise" of other people and make Westish seem like an integral part of Harbach's concept of family - your kin, the family you make for yourself on a team, and the place that you choose to make your home. I loved this about the book!

The use of metaphor and allegory on an almost metaphysical level was really striking, reflecting and intertwining so closely the story of Moby Dick, which of course is a bigger vehicle to examine the nature of life and the hero's quest archetype. It was a fun part of the read to put each rotating character in "Captain Ahab" driver's seat and examine what white whale they were chasing, and how they reconciled their original goals with what reality was willing to give them. Viewing the story through this lens, it's interesting to think of Owen as the story's ultimate "White Whale." 

He is clearly Guert's white whale, but Owen's absence from any 3rd person omniscient story focus is very notable, and different facets of his persona to different levels represent what each other character is chasing. Henry chases perfection to the point of starvation and mania, whereas Owen, calmly detached from the game, makes the team as a freshman and rarely misses a line drive. Mike Schwartz desperately wants to move on to a prestigious, important place before he is cast away for Westish after graduation, while Owen is the leisurely winner of one of the top academic honors in the country, inviting him to venture to Japan on scholarship. Pella wants to understand and be understood by Guert, while Owen understands and is understood by Guert. The boat and crew imagery at the end of the story, too, is both emotionally face-punching and thematically brilliant.

I've only ignored talking about how awesome the characters were because everyone else said it! The book broke my heart and warmed it at the same time, and I loved how this group of such different personalities all was brought together in some way by the love of a sport and by the love of a place like Westish that many of us have had the privilege of experiencing in our own lives, whether that be a college, a sports team, or even an old kitchen run by an over-qualified, temperamental chef :)

Rebecca Owen

Thoroughly enjoyed inhabiting the world described in this book. Brilliant characters, brilliant location and a fantastic story. I know very little about baseball and I'm not usually a fan of sports fiction but still loved this.

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Flavia Louise

What is the best thing about this book? Well the pride I take in actually finishing it.
I wouldn't say that it is bad book per sé but I really had to force myself to get through it which is the reason I am giving it only 1.5 stars. The book features beautifully done symbolisms and themes that I did enjoy. But enjoying a handful of sentences in a more than 600 page book is just not enough for my liking.

Robin M Cabana

I am not really a fan of baseball or any sports, but I found myself cheering for the Harpooners and rooting for most of characters who weren't even on the Westish team. This book also had me wishing I went to a smaller college where everyone knew each other.

Melody Izard

Closed the book. Had to go find a tissue to blow my nose and wipe the tears. I'm not going to stop thinking and worrying about these young people full of doubt and potential. Trying to find where they fit. Lending strength. And loosing it. Life is art. Flawed but oh so lovely.

Patty M.

Around the Year in 52 Books
Week 26 Prompt: A book with a text-only cover

This book was a slow burn and could have been about 100 pages shorter. Nonetheless, it kept me interested and drew me in every time I picked it up. If you're not interested in baseball, don't read this book. I, however, love baseball, though I'm not big on sports novels. This book was exceptional. Multiple viewpoints, college environment, deeply woven storylines between characters...I'm so glad I finally picked this up after being on my TBR for years.

Daryl Houston

A friend tweeted about this book, and I replied with interest. The next day, a copy arrived in the mail from I know not whom. Four days later, I've finished it. This is maybe not a great book, but I think it is a good one. Harbach claims David Foster Wallace as an influence (and sought out DFW's editor Michael Pietsch to edit the book), but his style and approach are more like Franzen's (who blurbed the book). That said, the things I find so irritating in Franzen are much more muted in The Art of Fielding. A fan of both Melville and baseball, I was pretty much the exact target audience for the novel, and I especially enjoyed the bits about baseball. If Harbach hasn't done to baseball quite the justice Wallace did to tennis, I think he has in any case written about a sport many think of as dull in a way that many would find exciting.

The adults in the book are a bit too childish and the kids on the whole a bit more adult than most in their early twenties (perhaps this is Franzen's influence). None of the characters strike me as wholly authentic (in a book in basically a realist tradition), but several are sympathetic and fairly compelling.

Harbach turns a few nice phrases but ignites no real stylistic pyrotechnics -- which is probably smart but which, as with many other authors generally regarded to be solid authors, leaves me a little cold. His prose does come off as effortless, and it goes down easily. It's a quick read, almost a beach type read, and this too I find a little disappointing. There's much to be made of the male kinship that existed on whalers and that exists in athletics; Harbach aims glancing blows at some of the possible material but leaves a lot of it on the table, opting instead to give us lighter, Franzen-esque melodrama. 

It's a good book that I enjoyed and actually had trouble putting down (with an ending I quite liked), but I think it could have been a great book. I wonder if it wasn't made more palatable and melodramatic during editing for the sake of selling copies to pay off the unlikely $650k auction price it fetched.

The Art of Fielding A Novel

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