Books › The Art of Fielding
The Art of Fielding
512 pages
An immersive, big-hearted campus novel that captures the agonizing pressure of ambition and the saving grace of found family.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping onto a crisp, autumn-swept Midwestern college campus and being immediately folded into the messy, intertwined lives of its residents. It unfolds at a steady, unhurried pace, allowing you to deeply inhabit the minds of characters who are all, in their own ways, buckling under the weight of their own expectations. The prose is expansive and classically warm, treating the mechanics of baseball and the nuances of a Melville seminar with the same earnest reverence. It is a wistful, deeply empathetic reading experience that captures the terrifying fragility of talent and the sudden, disorienting transitions of early adulthood. It will thoroughly delight readers who crave big, immersive ensemble novels where the quietest interpersonal failures feel as high-stakes as a championship game.
- Mood
- autumnal
- intimate
- wistful
- campus-bound
- Tone
- earnest
- empathetic
- melancholic
- warm
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the weight of ambition · fear of failure · found family · the fragility of talent · coming of age
- The writing
- Expansive, unhurried, and deeply observant, with a classic, almost nineteenth-century warmth and clarity.
- The arc
- Moves from the bright, untroubled promise of youth through a devastating crisis of confidence, culminating in a bittersweet but hopeful acceptance of human limitation.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love immersive, character-rich campus novels and stories about the agonizing pressure of living up to one's potential.
Content notes
- death of a loved one
- depression and anxiety
- substance use
- infidelity
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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