Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR and Lit Hub. A Los Angeles Times Bestseller. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “In The Cactus League [Emily Nemens] provides her readers with what amounts to a miniature, self-enclosed world that is funny and poignant and lovingly observed.” –Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review An explosive, character-driven odyssey through the world of … Review
An explosive, character-driven odyssey through the world of baseball
Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, petty criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out why–as they hide secrets of their own.
Humming with the energy of a ballpark before the first pitch, Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League unravels the tightly connected web of people behind a seemingly linear game. Narrated by a sportscaster, Goodyear’s story is interspersed with tales of Michael Taylor, a batting coach trying to stay relevant; Tamara Rowland, a resourceful spring-training paramour, looking for one last catch; Herb Allison, a legendary sports agent grappling with his decline; and a plethora of other richly drawn characters, all striving to be seen as the season approaches. It’s a journey that, like the Arizona desert, brims with both possibility and destruction.
Anchored by an expert knowledge of baseball’s inner workings, Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League is a propulsive and deeply human debut that captures a strange desert world that is both exciting and unforgiving, where the most crucial games are the ones played off the field.
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The Cactus League
by
Emily Nemens
2 Stars
I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn’t work for me. The book is a series of related stories centered around a troubled baseball star during spring training in Arizona. The book is billed as a novel, but each chapter is essentially a separate story centered around one character or group of characters that come together during spring training. As a result, there’s very limited character development and little or no flow to the story. The ending attempted to tie it all together, but it was extremely weak and disappointing. And I guess that really sums up my impression of the book as a whole: weak and disappointing.
A debut? You’ve got to be kidding.The Cactus League reads like the work of a seasoned novelist. The way the story’s tension ramps, the richly drawn characters, the indelible imagery ― you’ll never see a ball park the same ― not to mention Emily Nemens’s knowledge of America’s pastime is downright encyclopedic. And while all those things are true, absolutely true, the heart of this amazing novel is Emily’s understanding of the crucibles faced by those both in the limelight and out of it. Goodyear and the rest of the gang are a cast for the ages. Hip hip hooray for this achievement.
Emily Nemens’s magnificent debut is a masterwork of great empathy and detail, uncovering the realms of incredible pain and beauty enmeshed within every level of America’s pastime. If you love baseball, you won’t put it down, and if you don’t love baseball, you might by the end.
This book came out as the author was starting a temporary position as an editor at a major literary journal, and I think that must account for some of the over-positive reviews from others in the literary world. The Cactus League reads like a student’s thesis project, something tacked together out of what she’d already written and didn’t want to waste. The literary tricks the author tries have already been done, far better: multiple points of view, a main character who’s as much in the background as any others, and a story without a resolution. There’s nothing new here, in structure, style, or content. The book is an airplane read with literary pretensions, for baseball fans. If you must read it, at least skip the narrator who’s meant to stitch these stories together as a novel and to suggest that there’s some kind of mystery about what’s wrong with Jason Goodyear, as if the reader can’t figure this out from the first moment that Jason scuttles off to the casino. I’d say the writer is condescending to the reader here, but there’s no sign of anything more skillful or intriguing in the novel, so I think this is her sincere and level best attempt, just one that’s a tired flop.
What Nemens does in THE CACTUS LEAGUE — and brilliantly so — is to describe the quietly desperate lives of the various characters and invite the reader to find not only empathy with them, but communion as well.
The Cactus League is not just another baseball novel. I can’t think of another book that so carefully examines the complex ecosystem of professional sport. With both compassion and objectivity, Emily Nemens deftly depicts the rich lives and stories that swirl beneath the ‘meaningless’ innings of spring training.
Emily Nemens gets beneath the image ― the macho chewing, spitting, ball fondling, the studied nonchalant distraction ― to the real people on the field and off. She’s a true fan, and one hell of a writer. The Cactus League is crisp, clean, funny, and just plain good. If you love baseball, and fiction, you’ll love this book.