A spirited vision of America and its national game.
Janko (Buffalo Boy and Geronimo, 2006) delivers a meditative and lyrical baseball novel.
Billy Donachio is the bench coach for the National League pennant-winning 2018 Chicago Cubs, a fictional version of the team with glancing parallels to real life. Similar parallels reign in the novel’s political world, in which semiauthoritarian Republican President Michael J. Trent runs for re-election against surprise Democratic candidate Khadijah Jamil, a Muslim woman from Chicago’s South Side. Donachio is a perennial loser—a lifelong coach who never quite made it as a player; for every team he’s played with, he seems to have been bad luck. However, as the Cubs head into a World Series matchup with the Boston Red Sox, he’s heartened by his team’s unique trio of stars: Johnny Stompiano, an irrepressible base-stealer and political activist; Hector Jesús Mijango Cruz, an openly gay slugger; and Arshan “Azzy” Azzam, the team’s ace pitcher. All three are devoted to bringing a sense of poetry back to the game—quite literally, in the form of verse on video billboards outside Wrigley Field—and are devoted to Jamil’s controversial candidacy. As the series progresses, Donachio becomes increasingly attached to two orphan boys, Sam and Jackie, who he believes are the team’s good-luck charms, and he also begins to steal notes and letters from his players’ lockers. These notes, full of poetry and philosophy, inspire Donachio and the Cubs to new, yet precarious, heights. Janko’s prose is by turns thoughtful and poetic, and over the course of the story, he weaves together a multitude of voices, including Donachio’s inner monologue, rat-a-tat-tat dugout chatter, shock-jock radio play-by-play, and the unceasing roar of the fans. Each character has his or her own finely wrought cadence, and their actions throughout the plot are all believable and well-earned. The version of America that Janko imagines here can strain credulity at times; no ballplayer has ever spoken like these do (Azzy says of Satchel Paige: “Old as he was, he whipped hot strikes burning down the heavens”), and the political race swings wildly. However, the authorial brio is enough to keep readers engaged and entranced.
A spirited vision of America and its national game.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-936970-51-3
Page Count: 308
Publisher: New Issues
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing...
Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past.
Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the “sociopath” Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef. And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from a Taliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending.
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 1-57322-245-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
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