I worked in the sport on a professional level for a Major League Baseball team for 13 years. The shame of these sentiments about the way the plot unravels is that I’m a baseball girl. In baseball terms, it was a swing and a miss. I was curious about the characters, but then, swiftly-as swiftly as a hitter can swing a bat at a 95-mile an hour fastball-he lost me. His poetic sentences are captivating, and in fact, my perception up of the novel until the halfway point was quite favorable. Some of his prose is melodic and lyrical and deeply emotive. Disconnect because I had a hard time identifying with any of the characters and their actions, and confusion because I am left scratching my head and continue to have difficulty explaining why I was just left feeling blah about it.Īs for the latter, there is no doubt Harbach can write.

Yet, the overwhelming sentiment I was left with at the end of Chad Harbach’s novel “The Art of Fielding” was only one of disconnect and confusion. And, it is even more rare for me to be overly critical of a writer, especially one who spent ten years crafting his book to get it just the way he wanted it. It is rare for me to be at a loss for words, to be left with the inability to articulate why I was left feeling blasé about a piece of work that The New York Times Book Review called the Best Book of the Year for 2011. Here are my thoughts on “The Art of Fielding” as promised. Once again, I’ve crafted a review to share with my Feature Writing students as they prepare to write a creative critical review of their own.

The art of fielding book review