The Art of Fielding

The Greater Westford Literary Society welcomed a new member last night to our lively and quirky group of readers.  We only hope he agrees to return for the next meeting.  Welcome Allen!  I hosted and hemmed and hawed over whether to serve protein drink or ball park food.  My healthier side won out and, although we had chips and ice cream, we also munched on some fresh vegetables, hummus and turkey burgers.  We had a lively discussion about the various characters and their relationships in The Art of Fielding.  Everyone liked the book.  We all loved the baseball scenes, which prompted us to urge college baseball stories from Terry.  We agreed that character development was well done on a very large number of characters in a way that we all cared about each character.  Criticisms had to do with some far fetched action such as Pella sleeping with Henry, the group excavating the grave and not being noticed and Owen being allowed to read novels on the bench.  But as Chrysanne remind us...it is fiction! We agreed that this was a great summer read!  Thanks, Mindy for the suggestion!

I found a great review from the NY Times and here is a quote which sums  up part of our discussion:

Chad Harbach makes the case for baseball, thrillingly, in his slow, precious and altogether excellent first novel, “The Art of Fielding.” “You loved it,” he writes of the game, “because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about the Human Condition.  



Ironically, references are made to many novels and we chose one of them, A Prayer for Owen
Meaning by John Irving for our next novel.  We are meeting August 24th at Mindy's house at 7PM.