The Art of Fielding: A Novel

Chad Harbach

Little, Brown, Sep 7, 2011 - Fiction - 528 pages

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

What people are saying

Review: The Art of Fielding

User Review  - Grace Yeo - Goodreads

The Art of Fielding is about baseball, but also about more than baseball, which is a good thing, because if I had wanted to learn about baseball, I would have gone to a game. The book centers around ...

Review: The Art of Fielding

User Review  - Alison - Goodreads

I avoided this book like the plague since I'd read about the huge advance, the MFA, the over-the-top praise, just another male writer that we're all supposed to worship...but in the end, I was the ...

About the author

Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and was educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder and coeditor of n+1.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Art of Fielding: A Novel; Back Bay Books
• Author: Chad Harbach
• Publisher: Little, Brown, 2011
• ISBN: 0316126691, 9780316126694
• Length: 528 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Sports