Scan barcode
A review by peggyd
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens
4.0
This book is about the downfall of an all-star, MVP baseball player, Jason Goodyear, as told through nine different perspectives in nine different chapters (get it? nine innings?), giving this the feel of loosely linked stories (has a Goon Squad vibe) circling around one focal point but becoming something bigger in the process.
So this may be about baseball on the surface, but this is really a book about desperation, a certain slice of American desperation specifically. The perspectives range from a batting coach, a relief pitcher who's lost his stuff, baseball wives (a particularly withering chapter), "cleat chasers" (women decidedly NOT baseball wives), an agent, etc. They all have their own struggles--alcoholism, job loss, insecurity, aging--and they all play some role in Goodyear: gossipy observer, enabler, unwitting accomplice.
It took me awhile to get into this book and its rhythms, but once I did it was a real page-turner and a strong rendering of the breaking points and/or turning points we all face in our lives. Most characters don't come off so well here; marriages and romance are (mostly) flimsy and shallow and many are barely hanging on financially turning them into people they barely recognize. The baseball details are great but secondary--you don't have to know or enjoy baseball to get something out of this book.
The interstitial sections between chapters--by a down-on-his luck sportswriter (I think everyone is down-on-their-luck in this book) don't quite work in trying to connect the prehistoric terrain of Arizona (an ocean beneath the desert) with the action on the field and in the bars and behind closed doors. It feels forced. And our focal point, Goodyear, never feels fully formed, even as the cause of his downfall becomes glaringly obvious. But overall this captures a kind of desperation that feels unfortunately familiar in this day and age, and even though Nemens writes her characters with a certain amount of empathy, no one is off the hook here. Everyone needs to take a look in the mirror and take stock of who they've become. An impressive debut.
So this may be about baseball on the surface, but this is really a book about desperation, a certain slice of American desperation specifically. The perspectives range from a batting coach, a relief pitcher who's lost his stuff, baseball wives (a particularly withering chapter), "cleat chasers" (women decidedly NOT baseball wives), an agent, etc. They all have their own struggles--alcoholism, job loss, insecurity, aging--and they all play some role in Goodyear: gossipy observer, enabler, unwitting accomplice.
It took me awhile to get into this book and its rhythms, but once I did it was a real page-turner and a strong rendering of the breaking points and/or turning points we all face in our lives. Most characters don't come off so well here; marriages and romance are (mostly) flimsy and shallow and many are barely hanging on financially turning them into people they barely recognize. The baseball details are great but secondary--you don't have to know or enjoy baseball to get something out of this book.
The interstitial sections between chapters--by a down-on-his luck sportswriter (I think everyone is down-on-their-luck in this book) don't quite work in trying to connect the prehistoric terrain of Arizona (an ocean beneath the desert) with the action on the field and in the bars and behind closed doors. It feels forced. And our focal point, Goodyear, never feels fully formed, even as the cause of his downfall becomes glaringly obvious. But overall this captures a kind of desperation that feels unfortunately familiar in this day and age, and even though Nemens writes her characters with a certain amount of empathy, no one is off the hook here. Everyone needs to take a look in the mirror and take stock of who they've become. An impressive debut.