Customer Reviews

BRITTLE INNINGS.

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Or maybe they did. Or maybe nobody ever thought of it before. If you had a contest of either the most unlikely types of books or ideas that you just didn't think would work, this would probably top the list. Baseball and Gothic horror? Taking place in WWII-era South? In the summer? But oh man is it good, in large part to Bishop's attention to period detail and his creation of a unique and feisty narrator in the young (and old) Danny Boles. The premise is that a young reporter has tracked down Mr Boles in an attempt to write a book about his life (he's a well known baseball scout) and Danny agrees, only if the first book the reporter does is a story of his only season playing in a professional fashion, with the Hellbenders. Thus the story begins, winding along, following Danny and his attempts to fit in with his team. The team consists of some of the most interesting characters, nay, people to come by in a long time. There is no one there that you can either straight out love or hate, the worst person has an endearing trait, the best of them hides a secret of some sort. Towering over it all literally is Jumbo Hank Clerval, the man who winds up being Danny's roommate (partway through the book he loses the ability to speak, which makes it even more interesting because Danny is forced to watch without acting more often than not) and the focus of the book itself. If you don't know how Mr Clerval is, well I won't spoil it for you, but that's where the unlikely concept comes in. The rest of the book is pitch perfect summer baseball, I don't even like sports that much and I loved this book. You sweat with the team as they win and lose game after game, fighting for the pennnant, trying to get some dignity and recognition in a country where everyone else is focused on the war effort and using baseball just as reason to forget their worries. Against this backdrop the summer falls and you are immersed into the South, warts and all, racism and truimph, tragedy and heroism. It's all there, this book breaks genres and it's a book you can recommend to most anyone. And I suggest you do.

I thought I was getting a book about baseball when my in-laws gave this to me for Christmas. Frankenstein's monster? Who'd a thunk? And to imagine that he's a vegetarian power hitter for a minor-league club in Georgia. Well, don't that just beat all.

The strange thing is that, though I should have hated this, I didn't. I was charmed.

A fabulous combination of the horror genre and sports writing. To top it off, Bishop is strong writer. His characters are well-developed and likable (I hate reading a book where I don't like anyone) and he's excellent at turning a phrase. He's even able to provide a highly believable re-creation of 18th century writing. Some of the events are disturbing, some humorous, and it all comes together beautifully.

BRITTLE INNINGS is a gem of a story -- a World War II Southern Gothic fantasy baseball novel (and I think I may have left out one of the other genres), as comfortable as an old glove.

I especially enjoyed the idiom in Bishop's dialogue (when a girl calls a soldier "sojer," it's spelled that way) and the terrific baseball sequences, especially an extended account of a spellbinding matchup between the Hellbenders and a talented Negro League team. The casual racism by the white characters is painful to read, but unfortunately rings true.

I didn't want this moving story to end. Save it for summer and savor this true find.

Two final notes: I'm dismayed with all the spoilers that give away Jumbo's identity -- it really ought to be saved for the reader to think out. And for those who enjoyed BRITTLE INNINGS, look for a novel called IF I NEVER GET BACK by a guy named Daryl Brock. It's a time-travel novel set in the very early days of baseball, and has some of the same winsome qualities as BRITTLE.

What an unexpected book! It starts as the tale of a teenaged Okie shortstop lured to play baseball for a Phillies class C affiliate in the rural south during World War II. This story, on its own, with all the attendant delving into the era, race, gender, etc. is very well done. But, about a third of the way into the book the reader discovers that the Okie's huge, ugly roommate is Dr. Frankenstein's monstrous creation, last seen in the arctic north! I can't conceive of how the author came up with this idea, but it works. The Okie finds out and the secret bonds the two until the climactic ending, which involves a number of deaths. If you like baseball, this is a really good piece of fiction, if you can handle the sci-fi element noted above.

Set in 1943, Brittle Innings is the story of a 17 year old minor league shortstop from Tenkiller, Oklahoma named Danny Boles. If it weren't for baseball, Boles would have very little going for him. He's short (5'5"), has big ears, stutters (only to lose his voice altogether early in the novel due to an assault while on board a train), and he has no idea where his father is. While most of America's young men (including players like Joe Dimaggio) were busy fighting overseas, Boles is invited to play for Georgia's Highbridge Hellbenders.

Boles' transition from playing for his high school to a potential lauching pad to the big leagues is not easy one. For some his teammates, the Hellbenders is their last chance to make a living playing baseball, and for others, it's a means to avoid the draft. And some of these players care little about a mute 17 year-old boy playing a "grown man's" game. Come Hell or highwater, they'll do what they can to keep playing the game.

That's when Boles' roommate "Jumbo" Hank Clerval enters the picture. Clerval is in many ways Boles' antithesis. Clerval is over seven feet tall, is extremely articulate, and he's nearly 150 years old. He is also a vegetarian and a pacifist, the latter of which was not a popular stateside belief after Pearl Harbor. Despite their superficial differences, Boles and Clerval are both able to forge a friendship that is rooted in their internal similarities - one of them being how both men endured turbulent relationships with their fathers. Clerval protects Boles from the bullying from some of the teammates, and Clerval places his trust in Boles to write the missing chapter from his life. The first chapter of which was in real life written by a woman born Mary Godwin (who is known better by another name, but I'll let you figure that out).

This is one of those novels that should have for all intents and purposes been a colossal failure. It could have been played like a cheap B-movie with the unbelievable inclusion of two vastly different plot devices. Instead, it is in my opinion an unheralded triumph in late 20th century American literature. This book is like Newton's Law in reverse: everything that can work DOES work. Michael Bishop, who is mostly known for writing science fiction, channels William Faulkner, W.P. Kinsella, and the aforementioned Godwin in ways that compliment rather than clash. It truly speaks volumes for Bishop as a writer the way in which he changes perspectives from Boles' 1940s southern dialect as opposed to Clerval's sesquepedalian vernacular (YIKES, Now I'm beginning to write like Clerval talks - Help me) while staying well within the context the story. But what's best of all is how he humanizes Clerval, even if he is a construct of cannibalized body parts. Even though Clerval has had well over a century of practice at being a human being, he still sometimes fails - like the rest of us. As far as Michael Bishop goes, I'm sure he's had failures in his life. This book is most certainly not one of them.

This is a terrific, literate, well-researched book. It is evocative of To Kill a Mockingbird, and you might swear that it was written during that same era, yet it was published in the 90's. I don't care for baseball, and I loved the book. The characters will draw you in, and the plot unfolds--again--like the best literature from the 40's and 50's. The meaning behind the title is finally revealed late in the book, and it fits incredibly well with the story of young Danny Boles.

Adults of all ages will like this, but surprise someone who likes literature from the mid-20th century with a gift of this book. Find an English major whose specialty is literature from that era. People like this will be especially appreciative of the language, the tone, and the feel of the book.

Set in the same period of baseball as "A league of their own," this is a novel which evokes the same sort of nostalgia for a time when the game was about hope and camaraderie and when the money was just a tad better than a living wage. As a chronicle of a small-time local league team in Georgia, it will more than hold your interest. Michael Bishop draws the entire team, the owner, his wife and their niece as a complex set of interacting characters, described in the first person by the promising new short-stop from Oklahoma. As a baseball novel, this book cannot be faulted for its simple love of the game. On the other hand, the central plot twist has nothing whatsoever to do with baseball. Who is the monstrous Jumbo Clerval, huge and weird first baseman who doesn't say much but, when he does, talks in a foreign, nineteenth-century sort of way? Why is he so bent on self-improvement? Can the terminally shy narrator, his room-mate, trust him? Even when you begin to figure out the answers to these questions, the plot just keeps drawing you in. If you love baseball, you need to read this book. (With a name like Doubleday, I didn't have much choice.) If you love well-written science fiction, you need to read this book. (With a name like Doubleday, I get blamed for a lot of really rotten science fiction.) If you're an old softie who likes a story with a cast of hundreds, a gawky romance, a little dash of Southern sensibility and a sad but redeeming tale of life as a 6'8" chap at the North Pole (I hope this doesn't give the plot away), you definitely need to read this book. (This has nothing to do with me being a Doubleday apart from the height, but hey, I need a third point for the tricolon.) End of tricolon. If you read this book, and I beg you to do so, please let me know what you thought of it. I'd hate to think that the best novel I've read this year doesn't appeal to anyone else.

I'm not a fan of baseball, but after reading this novel I can understand the romantic, mythic nature of the sport a little better. You might want to read Frankenstein before you read this novel to get the in-jokes. It's a very satisfying novel--blends genres of mystery, sports, romance, and the more meditative personal history. I loved it.

More than anything else in this novel,which is presented as a semi-biography
is Bishop's ability to weave together the lives of some many disparate people who all have one thing in common...they are outside of the normal limits. They all are involved with a WWII (1943)Class C minor league team in the Alabama/Georgia region, the Highbridge Hellbenders.

The three main characters are a young okie (seventeen) who is signed out of high school to play on this team of misfits. Daniel Boles daddy teaches him to play baseball, but one day while fighting with his wife, hits Danny so hard that he doesn't speak for two years. By the time he leaves home he has developed a major stammer. After an encounter on the train to Georgia with an army DI who knew his dad, he lapses back into silence.

Jumbo Henry Clerval is a giant, over seven feet, and so ugly that people cross the street to get away from him. In reality he is a gentle giant, a vegetarian and autodidact, with a whopper of a secret (it comes out early in the book), who becomes Danny's roomate and mentor.

Lastly is Darius Satterfield, the illegitimate negro son of the owner of the team. Darius has great talent but can't play on a 'white' team in the Deep South, so he helps to coach and drives the team bus.

The lives of these three men are wrapped around different machinizations that include a sodomy rape, the death of Danny's father, adultory, a presidential visit, more adultory, miscengation, another death, a self-immolation suicide, a murder and a few other situations thrown in to make the book interesting.

The story is interesting for Bishop's ability to make everything that is happening seem plausible, but the book is no great shakes.