The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

I read this book because my wife bought it and it was sitting on the bookshelf. Even though I knew better I suspected it was sort of like the book The Catcher in the Wry by Bob Uecker. In other words, reading it was a random act.

With that said, I enjoyed the book. I am not a baseball fans, but only rarely skimmed the exposition about the game. Mr. Harbach did a nice job of creating a world that was an imaginary college in an imaginary city along the imaginary Lake Michigan (okay one thing is real). It took me a while to like the characters and begin to like them, but I eventually did.  It was a unique story with some interesting twists.

The author did a masterful job of showing both sides of the conflicts between classmates, lovers, and parents. You could see how each character could see themselves in the right as opposed to one person being the bad guy and one being the good guy.  I found this similar to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, but in a less frenzied way. As a reader, I loved each character’s inner struggle.