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akaakp.bsky.social · @akaakp.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Art of Fielding 4/10

I wanted to like it more than I did--all my favorite people loved it, and I'm a sucker for a baseball story. <br/><br/>It is beautifully written, and the characters are thoughtfully developed and likable. But I found myself really, really distracted by the paper-thin treatment of the few female characters. Now, I have no expectation or requirement that a book (and especially one about a baseball team) pass the Bechdel test (FYI, it didn't), but.... While the one female protagonist is sympathetic and likable, she's mostly there to throw a wrench into the lives of the men around her (and does so in the most predictable of ways). A few other ladies show up from time to time, but only for a moment or two, and they written almost as caricatures of women (seriously, the female student reporter shows up in one context and seems to be professional, a real reporter... then later we read her coverage of the team in the school paper, it's largely focused on the sculpted abs of the hot pitcher). <br/><br/>Honestly, I was surprised by own reaction to the book. I usually am not sensitive to such issues, and don't believe that any novel must be inclusive or even handed in terms of gender or anything else. But in the context of such lovely writing, and amidst such a fully developed and sympathetic cast of male characters, the cheap treatment of the few women who showed up really stuck out, and it distracted and annoyed me. It would have been far better had the author simply left women out of the story completely, and just focused the story in its entirely on the relationships happening between the men.

#book

Published 2026-01-07 12:13 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere