Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love [Hardcover]

Cathy Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2008

In Comeback Season, Cathy Day, author of the highly praised novel The Circus in Winter, tells the heartwarming story of how she got back in the game of love -- thanks to her favorite football team, the Indianapolis Colts.

In 2005, Day, an Indiana native, moves to Pittsburgh to start her dream job. She's thirty-seven, a college professor, an acclaimed writer -- and still single. Psyching herself up, she thinks, "This is the year for the Colts and for me." Instead, both Day and quarterback Peyton Manning face heartbreaking end-of-season losses: the man in her life decides to punt, and the Colts fall to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the eventual Super Bowl champs. Her blue heart broken, Day vows that if the Colts can come back in 2006 and try again, so can she.

Inspired by Manning's legendary perfectionism, Day spends the off-season "in training." She gets in shape, imagining that she's Rocky Balboa running through the Philadelphia streets to the tune of "Gonna Fly Now." She quits smoking. She reads dating primers. She watches Sex and the City. She takes notes. She asks everyone she knows, "Um, do you know any men my age who aren't married?"

Come preseason, Day reluctantly joins an online dating service and goes on practice dates while the Colts play practice games. Indy goes 1-4 in the preseason, which is better than Day's record of 0-4. Lonely and dejected, Day returns home to watch Colts games with her family, who are full of well-intentioned relationship advice -- much of it bad.

The 2006 season finally arrives. Each week that fall, the Colts battle a new adversary and Day faces her enemies: her own romanticism, indecisive men, and her biggest foe, the singles industry. Friends and family deliver impassioned pep talks but can only watch anxiously from the sidelines as Day marches bravely into bars and coffee shops to meet perfect strangers. On the way to the Super Bowl, she discovers that the key to winning -- in both love and football -- exists somewhere between Trying Everything and Letting Go.

Honest, touching, and frequently hilarious, Comeback Season tells a timeless story about our need to feel connected to people and to places. This year-long chronicle of one woman's journey will resonate with anyone who's ever looked for love...fumbled...recovered! and kept charging down the field.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While the premise of this memoir by novelist Day (The Circus in Winter) is promising, the narrator comes across as self-absorbed and whiney; the story of a 30-something professional's search for love in her new home of Pittsburgh, Pa., neither inspires nor consoles women in similar situations. Indiana native Day has a way with words and successfully incorporates quotes from classic sports movies and legends in her personal story. The parallel she draws between her beloved Indianapolis Colts football team's comeback season and her attempt to win at the game of love—including imaginary postgame recaps of her relationships and the inspiration she draws from her team's personal stories of hardship and triumph—is effective, if a bit contrived. Readers are witness to the play-by-play of her setbacks: failings of various dating services, the unfavorable demographics of Pittsburgh's dating scene, her now seemingly irreversible choice of profession over family. Momentary reflections on the lives of her relatives and the role they play in her life are heartwarming, but so short-lived that they seem nearly accidental. Readers will walk away with a larger knowledge of the Colts' 2006 season, but little else. (Feb.)
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Review

"Cathy Day has delivered an immensely readable and thought-provoking meditation on what it means to be smart and single in the early twenty-first century. Comeback Season reinvigorates feminist literature for the modern woman -- and through the unlikely lens of football, no less. This book deserves many stadiums' worth of readers."

-- Alicia Erian, author of Towelhead

"A moving, funny, and thoroughly absorbing account of one writer's quest for love. With frankness and verve, Cathy Day navigates online dating, location blues, and other hurdles that single professional women face. The result -- at once a reckoning and a study of longings held and choices made -- is an irresistible read that will have you cheering for Cathy Day."

-- Bich Minh Nguyen, author of Stealing Buddha's Dinner

"If anything could possibly be sweeter than a Colts Super Bowl win, it's reading Cathy Day's Comeback Season. Tighter than a Manning spiral, truer than a Vinatieri kick, more poignant than a Dungy halftime speech, this book is a winner."

-- Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated senior writer, author of Running the Table, and native Hoosier

"Cathy Day's story of her search for love (or, at the very least, a Colts win) is as compelling as a good novel -- it has suspense, surprising twists, and, in Cathy herself, a protagonist both complex and compelling. I root for the Colts, but by the last pages of Comeback Season I was rooting for Cathy more; just like our favorite team, she leaves it all on the field."

-- Christopher Coake, author of We're in Trouble

"For all of us ladies coming back for another season as singles, Cathy Day has written a smart, funny, and touching book. I don't know football, but I know dating, and Cathy Day has got it right. What I love most is that she does that almost impossible thing: she offers us a realistic ending that's also filled with hope. This is a terrific book."

-- Shannon Olson, author of Welcome to My Planet

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416557105
• ISBN-13: 978-1416557104
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,169,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book for Everyone, April 14, 2008

By 

E. Hurshman (Used to Be Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comeback Season (Kindle Edition)

This is a wonderful book that's fully of humor and humanity. It's a title I've recommended to my friends and family as a (true!) story that hits close to home for any intellegent person looking for their soul mate. The book has resulted in a lot discussions about relationships and the many dating moments that we've all experienced trying to find the right one. Cathy - don't give up!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring, thought-provoking read -- even if you're a dude, April 10, 2008

By 

Eric Kroczek (Muncie, IN, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love (Hardcover)

"Comeback Season" made me vaguely uncomfortable at first, for which I blame this simple fact: I'm a man. I don't read books about dating, especially women dating, not even if they have a catchy football angle. And to be utterly truthful, the last time I did any reading about football, I was thumbing idly through a year-old Sports Illustrated while waiting to get a cavity filled. So one would not think that I would even countenance reading a book such as this.

However, after hearing a radio interview with the author, I was moved to check it out, in part because I, like Ms. Day at the beginning of her book, am 37, educated, and single, and I would be hard pressed to think of a single acquaintance of my own age who is stil, well, single. Like Ms. Day, I have spent an inordinate amount of time wondering what's wrong with me, not out of unhealthy self-absorbtion, but genuine concern.

The difference between me and the author is that she decided to take action to change her life. And then she wrote this book. I assume you've read the synopsis already, so I won't dwell on the plotline, other than to say it is by turns funny and profoundly thought-provoking, a performance-art journal and a diary of 3 a.m. despair. It showed me a situation quite similar to my own, but from the perspective of a member of the opposite sex. And, no, guys, you'll find no feminist rants here, no man-hating or man-baiting. The most refreshing thing about the book, considering its subject matter, is its almost total lack of ideological or gender-based rancor and its refusal to indulge in victimology. Like her earlier novel, this memoir is peopled by fully-realized human beings, both women and men, who are by turns weak and courageous, despicable and generous; no heroes or heroines, nor blameless victims, nor mustache-twirling villains. Nor are there quick and easy self-help solutions: Cathy does not get a makeover, a new wardrobe, and a frontal lobotomy and immediately find the love of her life; nor does she halfheartedly embrace a bitter compromise. Instead, she finds her own core and an unknown strength of character with the help of her loving family and friends and the virtues she's learned from her sports heroes. She comes to terms with the past decisions she's made, and finds grace and meaning in her present life, without earth-shattering calamity, divine revelation, or Oprah. Rather, she finds that the simple, sometimes hackneyed, often maligned influences in our lives - football, family, friends, silly 70's rock songs - can lead us to our better, greater selves.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much better than "chick lit", February 13, 2008

By 

Cynthia Closkey "Brilliant" (Butler, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love (Hardcover)

I loved this book. It tells one woman's story of what it's like to be successful but single -- or possibly single because you've been so busy being successful.

But it also tells the story of coming back from failure, whether that failure is losing in the NFL playoffs or being passed over, yet again, by someone you cared for and who you thought cared for you.

Granted, I may be a bit biased in this assessment, being a somewhat successful and chronically single woman who also happens to adore NFL football. My first thought on hearing about this book was, "I should have written that." After only a dozen or so pages, I was enjoying the book so much I was glad I hadn't had to write it.

Then as I read further, and I saw where the story was going, how smoothly the storylines were woven together, how real the people were, how perfectly it all worked. I started to feel a little envious again, this time because I knew I couldn't have written this book -- not as well as it's written.

"Comeback Season" starts out as a clever premise but grows into a thoughtful treatise on the intersection of romance, success, confidence, and identity.