After the first 100 pages, I was ready to slam Chad Harbach's debut novel, The Art of Fielding. Baseball is a tricky sport to write about, it can either be beautifully artistic or incredible cheesy and Harbach's baseball action fell heavily on the cheesy side. It all felt forced, cliche and flat. But then something slowly changed, I more time I spent with the novel's characters, the more I fell in love with them. Characters that originally seemed one dimensional began to show depth as the story's plot lines moved further from the ball field. And by the time Harbach wrapped up the baseball action I was on full board. The final baseball scenes had all the action and excitement missing from the early ones, which I can only attribute to one thing, I cared.
The Art of Fielding isn't a perfect novel, the early chapters are stiff, the plot twists are overly dramatic, but Harbach has created an engrossing world that draws you in the more you open yourself up to it. Harbach's biggest achievement is creating characters that are easy to fall in love with and easy to root for. On the surface many of them seem to be cliches, but the more we get to know them, the more obtuse they become. As much as you feel you know them, they each continue to make choices that are hard to understand. In the hands of less talented authors, hard to understand character choices tend to create a void between the material and the reader, but Harbach's characters only make you root for them more.
The Art of Fielding is a highly pleasant read, a book anyone can pick up and enjoy whither a baseball fan or not. More importantly, it hints at greatness to come. This is a debut novel and shows in many ways, but its strengths suggest an extremely talented author who has a masterpiece somewhere inside. I can't wait to read that masterpiece.
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