A wonderful, warm novel from a major new American voice.
Henry Skrimshander, newly arrived at college, shy and out of his depth, has a talent for baseball that borders on genius. But sometimes it seems that his only friend is big Mike Schwartz - who champions the talents of others, at the expense of his own. And Owen, Henry's clever, charismatic, gay roommate, who has a secret that could put his brilliant college career in jeopardy.
Pella, the 23-year-old daughter of the college president, has returned home after a failed marriage, determined to get her life in order. Only to find her father, a confirmed bachelor, has fallen desperately in love himself.
Then, one fateful day, Henry makes a mistake - misthrows a ball. And everything changes...
Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin, and graduated from Harvard in 1997. He was a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, where he received an MFA in Fiction in 2004. He is currently the Executive Editor of n+1, which he co-founded, and lives in Brooklyn.
Title: The Art of Fielding
Author: Chad Harbach
ISBN: 9780007374458
Binding:
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: 2012-04-16
Number of Pages: 528
Weight: 0.3584 kg
'It's left a little hole in my life the way a really good book will' Jonathan Franzen
'This is an outstanding novel about sport and, in Henry Skrimshander, Harbach has created a character who will keep sports psychologists in conversation for years' Mike Atherton, The Times
'Charming, warm-hearted, addictive' Guardian
'Once started The Art of Fielding is a book you want to read and read. It is deliciously old-fashioned: it simply gets on with the business of creating vivid, layered characters and telling a good, engrossing story' Daily Telegraph
'An intricate, poised, tingling debut ... leaves you longing, lingering, and a baseball convert long after the last page' Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife, winner of the Orange Prize
'Chad Harbach has hit a game-ender with The Art of Fielding. It's pure fun, easy to read, as if the other Fielding had a hand in it - as if Tom Jones were about baseball and college life.' John Irving
Steeped in American tradition, this moving debut hits a home run...What in less skilled hands might have been a light comic novel evolves into a debut of great warmth and weight... This is a charming, moving and slyly profound novel. You might even say Chad Harbach hit this one out of the park' Sunday Telegraph
'Every bit as good as billed. A big, beautiful blowout of a book, sure and generous, it reads like a throwback to the mid-20th century, when American literature was in its pomp... an exceptional debut' Guardian
'A terrifically engaging novel... you will be rewarded by a page-turning, beguiling and wonderfully warm-hearted read'. Sunday Times
'The baseball sequences are terrific... Harbach captures precisely the strangely becalmed grace that sets sportsmen like Henry apart...Very good indeed' Independent
