Captivating entertainment. (26 b&w photos, throughout)
An award-winning TV writer (Hill Street Blues) turned novelist Frost (The Six Messiahs, 1995, etc.) proves just as skilled at nonfiction in his affectionate recreation of the dramatic 1913 US Open Golf Championship.
Beginning with interwoven biographies of Harry Vardon and Francis Ouimet, Frost slowly builds to the dramatic finish at the Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. Born on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1870, Vardon had won five British Open titles by 1913. He had contracted tuberculosis in 1903, but returned to top-level golf despite neurological damage in his right hand caused by the disease. With a demure, stay-at-home wife and a brother gone to America, Harry battled loneliness. On this side of the Atlantic, 20-year-old Ouimet was the Massachusetts state amateur champion and had been a caddie at the Country Club; his invitation to the Open was unexpected. The long, wonderful second portion of the story dramatizes the exciting week in September when Vardon, Ouimet, and others battled for the coveted title. Frost paints a lively supporting cast. Ouimet’s mother, brother, and sister were supportive, but his father had no truck with the silly game. English newspaper publisher Lord Northcliffe was blatantly nationalistic. Bernard Darwin, the scientist's grandson, found his niche as a first-generation golf journalist. Ted Ray, a big bear of a man, punched out a fellow English golfer before joining friend Varner and Ouimet in a three-man playoff. Walter Hagen was the first American playboy golfer, and ten-year-old caddie Eddie Lowery almost stole the show with his pugnacious confidence and sage advice for Francis. The shot-by-shot account of the 18-hole playoff captures the excitement of the day with its appreciation of the subtle shifts of the game and of the beauty of the Country Club. Throughout, Frost demonstrates a detailed knowledge of the different rules, equipment, and terminology used in 1913. Striking photographs complement the first-rate narrative.
Captivating entertainment. (26 b&w photos, throughout)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-7868-6920-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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A thoughtful and compelling book following the members of a single recruiting class at Penn State's distinguished football program through their college gridiron careers. By the end of their four (and in some cases five) years of college football, the group of 28 young men who had entered the school in August 1988 were reduced to a near-handful by injuries, academic shortcomings, transfers, and graduation. They had come to the small town of State College to play for one of the sport's fabled coaches, Joe Paterno, a man with a reputation for combining coaching excellence with a commitment to academic and ethical integrity. Denlinger, a Penn State alumnus who covers college football for the Washington Post, found that reputation for the most part merited. However, this is neither a bronzing of Paterno nor a whitewash of college sports. Given the trajectories of the young men he covered, that would be impossible. As Denlinger proves, college football is a bruisingly brutal sport, and several of the students he followed found their careers ended abruptly by torn-up knees, battered backs, and a variety of fractures large and small. About midway through the book, Denlinger observes, ``All college football players fall into two categories: The haves and the have-nots.'' To his credit, much of his book focuses on the latter group—from a student manager who improbably became the team's long snapper to the kids who never got much playing time. Finally, he closes by suggesting two major changes in college football: the elimination of artificial playing surfaces and a severe cutback in scholarships. Denlinger captures in equal parts the frustrating pain and the adrenaline-pumping thrill of playing college football at the highest level.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11436-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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