Review of The Fat Lady's Low, Sad Song

[kendallcurrier]

[i][Following is a volunteer review of "The Fat Lady's Low, Sad Song" by Brian Kaufman.][/i]

[rbc=3]id239601-125[/rbc]To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much when I decided to review [i]The Fat Lady’s Low, Sad Song[/i] by Brian Kaufman. It’s a book about baseball, after all; I’m an artist who hasn’t watched a baseball game in over a dozen years. I wasn’t sure I’d connect with the material. But it was nostalgia that led me to choose to review Kaufman’s book-- I read multiple biographies of famous baseball players as a kid, attended many Astros games in my hometown of Houston, and played softball until high school. Besides, I reasoned, the book promised a female pitcher worthy of the Major Leagues, and it’s only 200 pages, a perfectly acceptable length even if I hated it.



Yet this little baseball book knocked my expectations completely out of the park. I fully expected a tired, generic underdog sports team story, where the aging male protagonist rouses his ragtag group of players to work as a team, despite their having a female in their midst, and overcome all odds to win a championship, applause, yawn, fade to black. I’d watched enough sports movies to know the score; except, in this case, I absolutely didn’t.



The book opens on Parker Westfall, an aging, out-of-shape ballplayer slumming it in a motel room, waiting for a call from the major leagues. Instead, he’s contacted by Christopher Randall, owner of an independent AA baseball club, the Miners, located in Fort Collins, Colorado. He’s offered a year’s contract for $2000 a month-- pittance-- but receiving no other offers, he’s obliged to accept.



In Fort Collins, Parker meets his new manager, the ornery Grady, who takes an immediate dislike to him. Owner Randall tells Parker he’s signed a pitcher, a twenty-year-old Courtney Morgan, with a hell of a knuckleball. She’s got the stuff to make it to the major leagues, Randall assures our protagonist, if only she can make it in this boy’s club, defy all misogyny directed her way, and perform. He asks Parker to be an ally for her in the sea of his skeptical teammates, and Parker agrees.



But he’s not so sure himself whether Randall’s hire isn’t a publicity stunt. In the locker room with the rest of the Miners, he goes along with their snide and sexist remarks about the female hire-- until he gets a look at her. Almost instantly, Parker develops a wildly inappropriate crush on his much younger coworker, startling himself at the intensity of his attraction. When he watches her pitch, he realizes she’s “the real deal” and he yearns to help her despite all that’s against her.



Over the course of the book, we get the usual depictions of games played, the Miners starting off shaky, eventually hitting their stride. After initial distrust, Courtney realizes that Parker’s sincere in his desire to help her play her best. The team comes together and starts to win, starts to rally behind their “girl pitcher” even if most of them don’t entirely respect her. In this way, the book’s trajectory is predictable. In most other ways, it is not.



Each of the central and secondary characters are uniquely characterized and humanized-- dour manager Grady, puckish second baseman Grimes, charismatic shortstop Collier, dangerous outfielder Maggie, aging catcher Compton. Each one of them carries weight, reveals motives, and feels uncommonly distinct and satisfyingly real.



The writing throughout is a delight. It surprises with touchingly beautiful descriptions of scenery and setting. It expands and contracts, painting in broad strokes and capturing tiny, jeweled details in a single scene. The point of view bounces from character to character, allowing us much-needed outside reflections of protagonist Parker. Courtney Morgan shines, multifaceted, realistically navigating what often feels like shark-infested waters in her own team. Occasionally, refreshingly, the view expands to point of views from otherwise insignificant characters, regarding the team and stadium both from without.



The “locker room talk” is uncomfortable, true, but not nearly as cringeworthy as I dreaded. Many of the characters display some form of light sexism to outright sexual harassment towards Courtney. Parker’s love towards Courtney is definitely eyeroll-inducing, my least favorite part of the book, and yet he endears himself to the reader, my own reservations about his character gently dismantled through the course of the book.



Kaufman’s book is not perfect, however. He makes a few grammatical stumbles, and occasionally refers to his own characters by the wrong name. A tragedy in the latter part of the book made me wary, and I’m still unsure on whether I feel it strengthened or weakened the overall story, but I feel as though I might be won over in time.



That’s the best part of this book, really. It won me over, despite myself. It encouraged me to stay up into the small hours of the morning two nights in a row, as I told myself over and over “just one more chapter.” [i]The Fat Lady’s Low, Sad Song[/i] ultimately just feels [i]true.[/i] It made me relate to it as no other sports book has ever done. It made me, lastly, want to watch some baseball. It deserves all [b]4 out of 4 stars.[/b]

******
[i]The Fat Lady's Low, Sad Song [/i]
View: [url=http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/shelves/book.php?id=239601]on Bookshelves[/url] | [amazon=B07CKTDGN3]on Amazon[/amazon]