Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Most of the stories in this collection by Kinsella are about men grappling with significant life choices and often blurring the line between fantasy and reality in the process. An aluminum-window salesman who routinely picks up women while traveling on business, inventing new identities for himself and for them during whatever time they have for escaping from everyday life, meets someone who instinctively knows how to play the game, and his ordered existence is threatened. A widowed father, visited by a childhood friend with rapidly dissipating magical powers who needs his help for one last trick, commits a series of small crimes and ends up in the J. Walter Ives Institute for the Emotionally Disturbed, trying to convince the staff he really is crazy. These tales (the title story grew into the novel Shoeless Joe , which in turn was the basis for the film Field of Dreams ) are best when they venture into the fantastic and the narrative supersedes heavy-handed description and shallow characters. Most compelling is the story of the appearance of Sister Ann in an Iowa cornfield; she claims she's waiting for a miracle. She is revered and feared until she melts a foolhardy boy who exposes himself and the villagers come after her. (Nov. ) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The poorly chosen title might lead readers to believe that this is a collection of recycled baseball stories, but in fact only one of these weird and wonderful tales is sports-related. The title story contains the germ of Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe ( LJ 4/1/82); not as deep and rich as the longer work, it remains pure and perfect in itself. Among the other gems: ``Fiona the First,'' a portrait of a man doomed to spend eternity picking up girls at airports; ``First Names and Empty Pockets,'' in which a doll-mender saves the broken Janis Joplin; and ``The Grecian Urn,'' a tale of people traveling in time by becoming part of works of art. Few writers can match Kinsella's ability to establish tone, character, and a complete reality in just a few paragraphs, then sweep the reader into his imagined world. This book should be in any serious fiction collection.-- Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Kinsella, best known for The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986), here offers his third collection, originally published in 1980 in Canada: a grab-bag of old stories and oddities, most notable for the piece out of which grew a novel and then the movie Field of Dreams. The settings include Iowa, of course, as well as Canada and San Francisco. The title story later became Shoeless Joe and then, even later, the Kevin Costner movie. In it, a baseball announcer's voice very clearly says to the narrator, ``If you build it, he will come.'' He does (Shoeless Joe Jackson, that is) and says, looking around the ballfield, ``This must be heaven.'' ``No, it's Iowa,'' the narrator replies. At this point, the story is a curiosity more than anything else, its significance archival more than aesthetic, but it is the piece that will draw readers to the collection. ``Fiona the First,'' the opener, is about a pickup artist, an aluminum-window salesman who pretends to be whatever works; the story reaches for a kind of fabulism but falls flat--despite some clever repartee. In ``A Picture of the Virgin,'' some guys go to a famous whorehouse in Edmonton, and the narrator, ``somewhat of a virgin,'' ends up telling a long--and predictable, even tedious- -shaggy-dog story. Last, in ``First Names and Empty Pockets''--the most original tale here--the narrator fantasizes about meeting Janis Joplin and becoming her savior, keeping her from her own worst vices. Only for fans who want the entire oeuvre; others would do better to go to Kinsella's baseball novels to discover his most notable work. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
