The Iowa Baseball Confederacy: A Novel by W. P. Kinsella Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Iowa Baseball Confederacy: A Novel
Book Review: Excellent novel, what else would you expect from Kinsella?
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading "Shoeless Joe" my craving for W.P. Kinsella needed to be taken care of. When I picked up "The Iowa Baseball Confederacies" I did not expect to read it entirely in one day. But Kinsella has that kind of effect on a reader. He intertwines fiction with fact, reality with fantasy. He develops characters so well that you feel their pain when things don't go their way, and you share in their joy when things do. The story of Gideon Clarke and his obsession is a page turner for anyone who enjoys fantasy novels, and a healthy knowledge of baseball wouldn't hurt early. His use of the greatest double play tandem in baseball history, Tinkers-Evers-Chance, lets the reader associate reality with Kinsella's fantasy world. The story of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy and their 40 day baseball game versus the eventual World Champion Cubs of 1908 is a book I strongly reccommendBook Review: Excellent novel, what else would you expect from Kinsella?
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading "Shoeless Joe" my craving for W.P. Kinsella needed to be taken care of. When I picked up "The Iowa Baseball Confederacies" I did not expect to read it entirely in one day. But Kinsella has that kind of effect on a reader. He intertwines fiction with fact, reality with fantasy. He develops characters so well that you feel their pain when things don't go their way, and you share in their joy when things do. The story of Gideon Clarke and his obsession is a page turner for anyone who enjoys fantasy novels, and a healthy knowledge of baseball wouldn't hurt early. His use of the greatest double play tandem in baseball history, Tinkers-Evers-Chance, lets the reader associate reality with Kinsella's fantasy world. The story of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy and their 40 day baseball game versus the eventual World Champion Cubs of 1908 is a book I strongly reccommendBook Review: The Iowa Baseball Confederacy
Summary: 5 Stars
This was one of the funnest (is that a word?) books I've ever read. I rarely find a book that builds a story like this one. Kinsella has a gift of weaving reality and fantasy back and forth until you aren't sure what is or isn't possible. The story begins very much rooted in reality then slowly creeps into a fantasy world where baseball is no longer just a game, but quite literally becomes a religion, complete with choirs and lighting bolts from heaven. I actually noticed my heart beating faster as the games intensity built, I think it was around the 1700th inning. That's right 1700th. Read this book if you love baseball. Read this book if you don't, you won't be disapointed.Book Review: Didn't please me as much as I had hoped
Summary: 3 Stars
After reading the summary on the back of this book in the bookstore, I thought I would find it really interesting, considering I love baseball and I am always open to fantasy elements in stories. I enjoyed the premise of it: a man trying to prove that an epic game really did take place so long ago. However, when the man actually travels back in time to be at that game, I started to lose interest in the story. I don't think I can really pin down what I found wrong with it; I suppose I just would have written it a different way, that's all.Book Review: Holy Cow!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent story - vividly told - about when the Chicago Cubs came to play the All Stars from a Confederation of regional Iowa amateur baseball teams on July 4th, 1908 - or did they? It's 1978 and all mention of the Confederation and the game has been erased from written history, although vague memories remain with some of the elder residents of the region.Gideon Clarke chafes at being called an albino. "My hair is usually shoulder length, white as vanilla ice cream, which makes it difficult for me to appear inconspicuous. I am not an albino, for though my skin lacks pigmentation, my eyes have color: a pale, translucent blue." His sister "was born in 1944, and was, in some prophetic manner, named Enola Gay, a full year before the bomber droned over Hiroshima, its womb bursting with destruction." She became an early "Urban Guerilla" and hasn't been seen since. Upon his father's death by line drive at Milwaukee County Stadium, ("It's too bad there are no Hallmark cards saying `Sorry you we're killed by a foul ball,'") Gideon magically inherits his father's knowledge of, and obsession with, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy and "The Game."
Along the journey to vindicate his father, Gideon and his friend Stan, a struggling but eternally optimistic farm club player, travel back in time and encounter many wondrous folk, including the Native American, Drifts Away (that's him up in the clouds on the poster-quality illustration on the front cover.) Even Leonardo da Vinci and President Theodore Roosevelt make cameo appearances. Teddy takes a turn at bat and says: "I venture to say this gives new meaning to my credo `Speak softly, but carry a big stick.'"
It's a magical mystical tour, during which the reader is treated to many replays of the famous litany: "Tinker to Evers to Chance" and learns how a time-traveler figures out what time it is in Iowa. "What day do you think it is? Is it July 4th, or forty days later?" Answer: "It's August - look at the corn. "
Enjoy this book by the author who also wrote "Shoeless Joe," upon which the movie "Field of Dreams" was based, and remember: Harry Caray is calling baseball in Heaven and all is right with the world.