Chad Harbach - The Art of Fielding

Financial Times“This book delivers strike after strike...” It is, in fact, extremely difficult to review this book purely as a baseball novel because it is so much more than that. The coming-of-age that comes with one’s college years is one of my favourite parts of the book...

The Telegraph“Debut of great warmth and weight...” But what in less skilled hands might have been a light comic novel evolves into a debut of great warmth and weight. As the pages glide by it proves a comfortable, well-built American machine of a novel...

The New Yorker“Unusually charming début...” The main order of business here is to entertain, and in this Harbach succeeds. The dream of perfection deferred allows him to tell a story about our national past-time that manages, as well, to be about our historical present...

The Independent“It is a Very Good American Novel...” This is by no means a Great American Novel, then. The themes are lightweight and the conclusion too mid-afternoon, made-for-TV movie. But it is a Very Good American Novel, and an impressively ambitious debut...

Guardian“Warm-hearted, addictive, and very hard to dislike...” The Art of Fielding also has a similar post-postmodern, post-ironic appeal to Franzen's novels: it creates a richly peopled world that you can fully inhabit in your mind, and to which you long to return when you put it down...