NONFICTION: LEGENDARY GAME
Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry
On April 18, 1981, the day before Easter, the Class AAA Pawtucket (R.I.) Red Sox and Rochester (N.Y.) Red Wings began what still stands as the game’s ultimate expression (at least as measured by length of game): a 33-inning marathon that started at night, continued through the wee hours of Easter morning and finally, after a suspension of play following the 32nd inning, reached its conclusion two months later.
In “Bottom of the 33rd,” Dan Barry, the talented New York Times columnist, explores every musty crevice and tangential detour surrounding that epic, legendary game. Rather than take the easy road — such as leaning heavily upon the star power of Hall of Famers Cal Ripken Jr. and Wade Boggs, both of whom played in the game but who figure only slightly in the narrative — Barry masterfully pieces together his story from the perimeter in.
The book is both a fount of luxurious writing (a manager’s “glorious invective that resounded through the bare and cavernous stadium like a profane Gregorian chant”) and a tour-de-force of reportage. Although there are no footnotes, Barry appears to have interviewed the majority of the game’s principals in person, and he describes everything from the decrepit appearance of the ticket booth to the multicolored scribbles in the official scorer’s scorebook with a perfectionist’s eye for detail.
FICTION: MARITAL MISSION
The Ninth Wife by Amy Stolls
Bess Gray doesn’t exactly get the proposal of her dreams: While she’s answering the call of nature, her boyfriend shouts out a call of his own through the bathroom door: “Marry me!” It’s hard to imagine things could get worse, until Rory McMillan, Bess’ gregarious Irish fiance, reveals that in addition to bad timing, he also has eight ex-wives.
“The Ninth Wife,” by Amy Stolls, is a witty, satisfying novel with a clever structure. In alternating chapters, Beth describes their romance while Rory explains the back story of each of his relationships. Just before their narratives collide, Rory tells Bess, “We should talk,” and Bess fears what’s coming: “Every person who has ever been dumped knows those words, like the poised palms right before they push you off the cliff.”
When Rory reveals the truth, Bess flees — but not in the way that many women would. She puts his proposal on hold and sets out on a cross-country drive, ostensibly to move her grandparents to an assisted-living center in Arizona but with the stealth side mission of tracking down and interviewing Rory’s ex-wives.
As Bess learns some disturbing secrets about her long-married grandparents and interviews Rory’s previous lovers, she wonders if he’s really worth the gamble. As Bess puts it, “Love continually unleashes new questions that turn it inside out and make it stronger or weaker or just plain tiresome.”
There’s something so sweetly endearing about both Bess and Rory that readers will pull for them, knowing the odds may be against them — even against marriage itself — but hoping that, this time, true love will triumph. And also that Rory will improve his delivery of important questions.
FICTION: MIDSUMMER MASHUP
The Great Night by Chris Adrian
Chris Adrian’s third novel comes billed as a contemporary retelling of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” although that’s not really accurate.
Yes, the book takes place on Midsummer’s Night 2008, in a dream version of San Francisco; yes, its characters include Titania and Oberon, and a malevolent, supercharged version of Puck. But what Adrian seems to have in mind is less of a recasting than a riff, an extrapolation.
Unfolding in both the natural and supernatural worlds, the novel involves three mismatched mortals Henry, Will and Molly — each stumbling into a faerie kingdom while on the way to a party.
As in Shakespeare, the plot moves forward by coincidence, small bits of magic; there are deliriums and incantations and a play within a play. Adrian, however, uses his story to ask different questions, not about love so much as about its absence.
Those questions require a complex resolution in which fantasy is less important than fatalism. For the novel’s first half, Adrian is up to the challenge, but as the story progresses and the stakes get higher, all the charm of its invention can’t hide an uneasy emptiness at its core.
Mostly, this has to do with the mortals who, inhabiting both the real and metaphorical worlds, are never full participants in either one. All three have lost someone — Henry, his lover Bobby; Will, his girlfriend Carolina; and most tragically Molly, whose boyfriend, Ryan, has committed suicide. On the one hand, this suggests that there can be no reconciliation, no love made right by the casting of a spell. “But it is all for nothing, my love,” Titania explains. “We’ve already lost, and there’s nothing left but this lovely delusion. I am reduced, and you are dead already.”
