Kinsella seems to be living off the capital of Shoeless Joe (1982) in this collection of sketches and one-trick ponies—more throwaways than fictions—about the bush leagues. In the title story, basically a footnote to the movie Field of Dreams (which was based on Shoeless Joe), Mike Houle, a promising ballplayer who chokes in the clutch, is sent by his agent to Iowa, where he is supposed to work his way back to the big time by playing for a small-town team. He soon discovers that the team plays intrasquad baseball exclusively; it's simply an excuse to recruit eligible bachelors. Houle doesn't complain, however; while staying with a local family, he's fallen in love with the girl intended for him. The piece is clever, cute, and sentimental, and the same might be said for most of this collection. In ``Searching for January'' Roberto Clemente, killed years ago in a plane crash, returns from the dead in search of January 1973, when time stopped for him. ``The Fadeaway'' shows Christy Mathewson (also returning from the Great Beyond) teaching a manager about his fadeaway pitch. In ``The Baseball Wolf'' a player becomes a werewolf and convinces the narrator to turn into an owl with a taste for kangaroo rats. ``The Darkness Deep Inside'' at least has a satirical spin with a little bite: A player who's born again loses his competitive zest and becomes, by virtue of his peaceful demeanor, a ``disruptive force'' on the team. Neither as surprising or comic as T. Coraghessan Boyle, nor as wry and smirky as Bruce Jay Friedman, Kinsella settles for corn pone and tepid standup routines here, instead of teasing magic from ordinary lives as he does in his best work. Minor-league material.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017188-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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