The Art of Fielding

A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this widely acclaimed tale about love, life, and baseball, praised by the New York Times as "wonderful...a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting."

Named one of the year's best books by the New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Kansas City Star, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Time Out New York. 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.

"First novels this complete and consuming come along very, very seldom." --Jonathan Franzen

Author: Chad Harbach
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 05/01/2012
Pages: 544
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 8.23h x 5.48w x 1.46d
ISBN: 9780316126670

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.9
Point Value: 24
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 147967 / Art of Fielding


Award: Guardian First Book Award - Nominee


Review Citation(s):
Entertainment Weekly 06/01/2012 pg. 85
New York Times Book Review 06/03/2012 pg. 48
Entertainment Weekly 07/27/2012 pg. 73

About the Author
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 a co-editor of n+1, which he cofounded, and lives in Virginia.