Customer Reviews

Coyote Moon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The writing style is intriguing, even compelling, as is the subject matter, at first: handled with such skill that the reader hardly notices how much "telling" instead of "showing" is going on, with the introduction of the sizeable cast. From the first few chapters, we know that the two sets of characters are fated to meet, and we can't wait for it to happen...

...however, along the way, things get weird. Couples come together without effort, and the author feels no need to show us the intricacies of how this happens. Yes, I GET that it's not a romance novel, but still, it wouldn't kill him to have given us a little more than a single paragraph where we're told that they travel together and then have sex on a table and suddenly they're a couple, or a waitress sees an athlete and informs them they're going on a date and suddenly they're a couple.

Henry's adventures in the world of pro ball are, ultimately, pointless because nothing ever really comes of his being swindled on his contract, there's no focal point or conflict there because Henry himself is as impassive as a cigar-store Indian. If the point of his travails on the baseball team were to meet the fellow player that ended up living in the trailer park with the rest of them, this plotline could have been written FAR more tightly, precisely, and purposefully. As it is, Henry's entire plotline meanders until the reader is bewildered about what in the hell the point was to it all.

That leads me to Henry himself. I'm convinced that he is either a high-functioning autistic, or has Asperger's syndrome. I'm also confused as to how he keeps mentioning how he doesn't know where he came from, or what he was doing before being discovered for baseball, when it becomes perfectly clear that he DOES indeed know. Is he lying? Missing parts of his memory? Going insane? Am *I* going insane? It's so confusing.

His relationship with his new girlfriend is seamless perfection, with them concurring in every possible way, no matter what happens: living in a house with no furniture? Sure! Pregnant? Yay! Deserting his baseball career to head out to live in a trailer in the desert after reading a letter from an elderly German man? Why not! There's never any conflict or even a moment's dissent between them, thus creating a very unrealistic, unsatisfying relationship that cloys.

The same goes for Benny and Becky. I personally have trouble warming up to a woman who's so irresponsible with her birth control that she has three unplanned pregnancies in as many years. I also find her and Benny's delight in her last pregnancy puzzling and unrealistic, but that could be because their relationship is so poorly composed and exposed to us: they, too, have an idyllic dynamic with nary a disagreement or hiccup in how attuned their priorities are to each other. Again, the lack of conflict produces an unnatural, shallow pairing. A far better-developed, infinitely more touching depiction of love is that of the Schmidtbauers, and even Al's newfound love with the widowed proprietor of the trailer park has more "meat" and genuine sentiment and depth than the other two.

Most poorly done of all is how the two plotlines, always precariously connected at best, finally come together. I suppose the point of it all was that appearances can be deceiving, especially when you hope for something to be true so hard you delude yourself (as in the case of Gunter's insistence that Henry is Arthur's reincarnation). But the red herrings that are suggested so strongly, and then later on dismissed so perfunctorily, just leave the reader confused and baffled.

PS. the most ridiculous, unlikely aspect is how Benny and Henry both expound on arcane mathematic and scientific issues and, instead of those around them being bored and loathing them as show-offs (which is how most Americans are with exposure to advanced educational issues), they are greeted with exclamations of delight. Hello, wake up and smell the anti-intellectualism. If this happened in the real world, no one would engage in mutually rapturous expressions of joy and try to wrap their own brains around the issues brought forth by the eggheads. And I say this AS an egghead who's received this selfsame reaction myself, many times.

Thus the author's tenuous grasp on characterization causes him to create a cast that do not feel genuine or authentic; instead, they feel like ethereal dream-people who lack passion, reason, or sanity. They float through the plot instead of impacting it or the reader, and thus they are quite unsatisfying, insubstantial, and disappointing.

I felt really let down by the words on the cover that it was "A Novel of Love, Baseball, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Priciple". Unlike the other reviewer, I love baseball, I often read science fiction, and I've enjoyed the physics classes I've taken. I hated this novel. I found the book to be condescending to anyone who is interested in or involved with organized sports. It felt as though the author had no history is baseball and his choice of phrases reflected his lack of knowledge. I never felt an interest in the characters or their development or rather lack of development. The relationships between the characters were assumed. There was generally a paragraph to explain how these two people had become friends or lovers after they came together, rather than as part of the story. The further I read, the larger my distate grew. If you are looking for a baseball book, or a book about love this is NOT it.

An apparant reincarnation tale about a math guru who passes away and then a stud baseball catcher appears from virtually nowhere as it seems nobody has heard of him. He can play well, meets a girl and gets a contract with the Oakland Athletics.

He becomes the starting catcher and can seemingly do no wrong. A secondary story about a group of people that live at a local RV park is involved. Odd story. Readable. A Lamborghini is misidentified, the author and publishing house missed this bit of background research.

If you like this you may also enjoy Knuckleball: A Baseball Fantasy as it also strangely features the Oakland A's.

"Coyote Moon" was just a fun read. Lots of interesting characters that I cared about and situations that were just a shade beyond plausible to keep it a little surprising. The author constructs a well constructed story mixed with a little mystery and insight into science and baseball and human nature.

But it wasn't bad. This book is available at the Dollar General for a buck, incidentally.

I kind of liked it but wound up confused at the end. Who's your daddy?

This review will only make sense after reading the book, and maybe not even then.

Not a bad read. Most of the baseball stuff doesn't resonate but who doesn't like the story of the kid from nowhere making it big? The Natural. Mr. Miller's writing gets a little clunky as he shows off his math/physics chops and his German and his interest in Mexican cuisine....but heck, it's a cosmic, metaphysical novel. Best read with a little Grateful Dead in the background. It would make a great movie with some great characters.

Like "The Moose" this book is almost great, but fell just a bit short. I really enjoyed the interactions between Henry and the other Oakland A's...very funny. It was an enjoyable book and worth the read, but not on the level of W.P. Kinsella.

This isn't great great literature, but it does have a good dash of baseball humor similar to that in the movie Bull Durham, wives all men would like to have, and clearly explained scientific discussions - mostly on physical science concepts. All the science was well explained, although it also impaired the flow of the story.

What I enjoyed were the parallels in the story with the paradox of "Schrodinger's Cat." Henry Spencer and his relationship to baseball is the dilemma of cat in the box. He doesn't belong in the box. But it seems he's meant or destined to be there. Throughout the book, there's this feeling of something dreadful about to happen to him, as could happen to Schrodinger's cat if it were let out of the box. Then Henry leaves the box (the team.) To tell more of the rest of the story would deflate what little strand of a story there is.

Nothing to brag about, but enjoyable, nonetheless.

I found this book at a local bookstore, and I thought "What the heck!" and bought it. I should have saved my money. John A. Miller's Coyote Moon has nothing to do with coyotes (although they're mentioned) and nothing to do with the moon (although it's mentioned too.) Coyote Moon is positioned as a new age-meets-science in a ballpark feel-good novel, but it never really meets any part of that lofty goal.

I think I know what Mr Miller was trying to accomplish here: he wanted to show the triumph of science and education over the vapid, ignorant lifestyles that most of us lead, and wrap it all up with a big new-age flourish -as if a singularity of enlightenment blooms from a single unenlightened source. At least that's what I think he started out trying to write. But he didn't know how to pull it all together, how to bring it off in a graceful way. Or how to end it.

Instead we have oldsters in a trailer park, having oldster sex and hiking in the middle of the Mojave Desert for no apparent reason (Has Mr Miller ever visited Needles, California? He should probably know that anything along the River is very high rent, filled with dentists from Santa Ana and their wives and two-point-five kids and, most importantly, their 33' fiberglass kandy-kolored jetboats). Baseball players, and all athletes, are characterized as stupid and ignorant. Female characters cannot be described without detailing the size, shape and attractiveness of their breasts. Bit players are there just to bolster the cardboard-cutout lead characters, who really don't do anything until suddenly they do...something.

And the science! A mention of Schrödinger's cat does not make this a deep, thought-provoking book.

All of these themes -the stark desert, the essence of heat, the noble nature of the athletic hero (and sex, let's not forget sex!)- provoke a deep empathetic vibe in most people. But Mr Miller's book, Coyote Moon, does not.

The first few pages of COYOTE MOON are delightful. And although the characters get a bit more fleshed out, most remain thin. The plot lines promise more than they can deliver, but promise is something. There's a little nourishment here. Give it a chance!