Customer Reviews

Balls

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an interesting book set apart by it's narrative strategy. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different character. Frankly, I found this strategy confusing and difficult to follow. Particularly if you couldn't remember some of the minor characters. That aside, this book does an excellent job of showing what a coach's wife's life is like. Everyone knows coaches work long hours. Kincaid shows the real toll on the family.

What's not fully brought out in the publicity of the book is that it also deals with race relations in the south as well as that area of the country's obsession with college football. This book gives another perspective of the vicious tactics used by boosters when a coach is not performing to their expectations.

What is also interesting is that Ms. Kincaid is married to Dick Tomey, the Arizona coach who recently resigned after great success because the pressures from fans were just too great. Kincaid's biography touches on the fact that she was previously married to another coach who worked at Alabama (clearly the fictional school in the book) and Arkansas State. My guess is she may have formerly been married to Ray Perkins but none of the articles I read gave her first husband's name. If you know, please email me.

In summary, I enjoyed this book and read it in two days. It touches many important points about college athletics and race relations.

Being a fan of Nanci Kincaid, I am working my way thru her books with reluctance ONLY due to the fact I will soon run out of her reading material!

BALLS is a great book. The title may be a little misleading as when I first saw it I thought it would be a total sports book. How wrong! There are sports moments, but the story revolves around the women involved. READ THIS BOOK!!!

This book tells the story of Dixie and Max, childhood sweethearts who marry. Max becomes a college football coach and Dixie is left to tend to the children, home, and, sadly, herself. I loved Dixie and her Southern charm and Southern style. Her girl friends, mother, sisters-in-law, mother-in-law, friends, and daughter all help make the story flow and go.

This book is told in the narrative form, but what was most interesting was the fact that every woman involved in Max's life tells her story. Some of the "chapters" are one-half page long. This made the book so much more interesting and exciting being told from sooooooooooo many points-of-view. However, this form of story-telling DID NOT make the book confusing in the least.

As a NBA fan, I am constantly aware of coaches, their coaching staff, the job changes, the media, the love/hate affair that the public has with them. However, this book is from the WOMEN in their life's perspective and it is so good. When I see a coach standing on the side lines now I will think HIS POOR WIFE! There is SO much social status, politics, and CRAP involved, not to mention the toll it has to take on their personal lives. HATS OFF TO ALL COACHES AND THEIR FAMILIES!!!!!!!!!!

The women telling their stories are smart, wise, rich, poor, black, white, educated, uneducated, happy, sad, you name it -- how Ms. Kincaid was able to make each and every character DIFFERENT and have her own style and voice was amazing to me.

Don't miss this book. It IS good, as are all of Ms. Kincaid's writings -- check them out and read them. You will not be disappointed.

I was startled to see how long it has been since this book has been reviewed. Hopefully, people will find this book, read it, and enjoy it as much as I did!

Thank you! Pam {go PISTONS!!!}

My best friend and I are married to two head coaches at a high school brimming with a fanatical winning football tradition. I bought this book for her when it first was published, and told her to highlight sections she thought were realistic. When we got back together to discuss the novel, we had both highlighted the same sentences over and over again. The novel is written by someone who knows how families, and marriages, get sacrificed on the altar of athletics. I can only shudder at the thought of being married to a college coach. High school level is enough for me. The book completely captures the experience of being necessary for the obligatory parts you need to play at banquets and during appearances with darling children in the stands. Way to go, Nanci.

this book was bought on a whim. it was one of the best novels i have ever read. the way nanci kincaid writes is so unique that i was able to see the storyline from so many different positions. it was fantastic. everything about it.

I loved this book. I read it in three days. This was very true regarding the demanding, stressfull, trying life of a coaches wife. I am sure that there were many more chapters that the author could have included. She is a gifted writer. This book will be kept and read again.

When I started this novel, I thought Ms. Kincaid was suffering from a bad case of hyperbole gone to seed. Surely she was exaggerating in her portrayal of Mac Gibbs and his obsesssion with coaching football to the exclusion of everything else, including his wife and children. On the Sunday I finished this hilarious but ultimately sad novel, however, the esteemed newspaper of the east, the NEW YORK TIMES included a book about a football star in its book review section; and a football news story made its front page. I now suspect Ms. Kincaid may have been too kind. Her bio indicates that she has been married to two football coaches so she probably knows firsthand about that which she writes.

BALLS is set in Alabama, begins in 1968 and is told from the viewpoints of multiple women characters including Dixie Gibbs, Mac's long suffering wife; her mother Rose; her mother-in-law; other coaches' wives; a maid; et al. No males ever speak. They wouldn't have time anyway since they are too busy with the game of football. Ms. Kincaid divides her book into sections labelled "Pregame," "Kickoff," "First Down," "Second Down," "Third Down," and "Punt." She gets the times and accents right and certainly knows the lay of her land. You as coach certainly must recruit black athletes to play on your team, but what do you do when one of them gets your white daughter pregnant? Kincaid's universe is filled with cheerleaders, prom queens, Tastee-Freezes and the Baptist Church of course. (Although Mac's mother believes "the Lord" is working in his life, Mac opts for a career in coaching rather than in the pulpit.) His brother Marvin who is "different," has moved up east and rarely returns to Alabama. He doesn't want to embarrass his successful coach brother but does give his sister-in-law advice on hair: "'I mean, damn, girl, you got the same hairstyle you had back in high school. That pageboy is tired. You need a change.'" Dixie's mother Rose worries that her daughter is too smart, the daughter who thought her life was ruined when she was sick the week of cheerleader tryouts. She was elected homecoming princess anyway. "It was like you got to be commander in chief without having ever been a soldier."

Sometimes the constant changing of narrators gets in the way of the flow of Ms. Kincaid's story, but that is a very minor flaw in this often very funny tale. You can like BALLS even if you do not have the slightest interest in football since it is about anyone who sacrifices a family for a career.

BALLS, the 1998 novel by Nanci Kincaid, tells the story of Mac and Dixie Gibbs, high school sweethearts in Alabama. Mac plays quarterback for the Birmingham University football team during college and, after not being picked in the NFL draft, he turns to coaching as a means to stay connected to the game with his new bride by his side. He starts as a high school coach and gradually works his way up the ladder until he is the head coach of his college team, the HamU Black Bears.

The story, which begins in 1968, chronicles the relationship of Mac and Dixie through all of its stages: from the rosy beginning when living in a rundown duplex didn't matter, as long as they were together, to the later days, when Dixie and her two children begin to play second fiddle to Mac's team. The story is told in the voices of the women who surround Mac: Dixie, her friends, her mother, mother-in-law, and daughter, the wives of other coaches and the mothers of Mac's players.

BALLS is a novel about the Southern football tradition, where the sport is a religion in itself, where the holy day is Saturday and players are nicknamed "Miracle." Kincaid not only reveals what it's like to be a woman caught up in this tradition, always coming second to the game--she also reveals a darker side of the sport, where race relations are strategically upheld and corruption reigns supreme. Her female narrators touch on all of these issues in their narratives: love, marriage, sex, race, illegal activity. Their voices are exhuberant, their insights raw, poignant, and surprising. "I learned long ago that the big 'W', so sought after and revered, does not stand for 'wife,'" Dixie muses at one point late in the book.

BALLS is not just about the game--it's about what goes on before and after the game, from the perspective of the women in the stands who live the life of a coach's wife. It's about the politics of the game--recruiting, staffing, bribery. And foremost, it's about Dixie, who transforms from an inept new bride to a seasoned wife and mother and finally refuses to be second anymore. And it's about Mac, a good man who lets the job overtake him. And it's about all of the women who surround Mac, and the stories they have to tell. Kincaid balances her narrators successfully; her Southern women's voices are dead-on, and she is clearly writing about a topic that she's familiar with since she herself has been married to two college football coaches. Her insights about pressure from fans are also accurate--I know this because I myself live in a football town, where our hometown coach is alternately God or the devil, depending on if he puts a 'W' or an 'L' on the board for the team. Overall, BALLS is an energetic, sad, funny, and honest portrait of the life of a coach's wife, from first down to punt.

I was thoroughly entertained at the tales of the wives of the various football coaches. Their lives were sad and shallow, in a way, in that they revolved around the game of football. It was an enchanting view into a world where football is a religion. It was also interesting to see some of the women mature, while their mates did not. There is also some interesting takes on African Americans dealing with whites and the interactions of mothers and their children. This is the kind of good read to take on a trip to the beach.

I am the wife of a football coach. This book was the story of MY life! Kincaid has a terrific sense of humor. I have placed it on my book club list so that all of my friends will read it.

I am the wife of a football coach. This book is amazing. Kincaid has scenarios that often happen in college football, but are not discussed. I could not put it down! I kept gasping out loud and reading excerpts to my husband.

I enjoyed this book so much that I wrote Kincaid a long letter about her development of the characters and their lives. She knows football after being married to two high profile head football coaches.

Please get this book. It also makes a wonderful gift for any coaches' or player's wife.