RaveThe Kenyon Review[Harbach] has crafted a world that manages to be both familiar and unique … The Art of Fielding does not limit itself to being a ‘baseball book’ or a collegiate bildungsroman … While Harbach has received due praise for writing a novel that explores the nuances of male relationships, it is the character of Pella who ties the novel together … The men in the novel must first realize they are fallible and then confront those failures. Henry loses the ability to throw a baseball accurately and comes to understand that striving for perfection in a game where even the best hitters are successful only three times out of ten is flawed ambition.
