The Art of Fielding
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
The Art of Fielding
Buy for $27.58
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Holter Graham
-
By:
-
Chad Harbach
About this listen
A wonderful, warm novel from a major new American voice.
In The Art of Fielding, we see young men who know that their four years on the baseball diamond at Westish College are all that remain of their sporting careers. Only their preternaturally gifted fielder, Henry Skrimshander, seems to have the chance to keep his dream – and theirs, vicariously – alive, until a routine throw goes disastrously off course, and the fates of five people are upended.
After his throw threatens to ruin his roommate Owen’s future, Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his; while Mike Schwartz, the team captain and Henry’s best friend, realizes he has guided Henry’s career at the expense of his own. Keeping a keen eye on them all, college president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, falls unexpectedly and dangerously in love, much to the surprise of his daughter, Pella, who has returned to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.
Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warm-hearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment – to oneself and to others.
©2012 Chad Harbach (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedCritic reviews
‘It's left a little hole in my life the way a really good book will’ Jonathan Franzen
‘This is an outstanding novel about sport and, in Henry Skrimshander, Harbach has created a character who will keep sports psychologists in conversation for years’ Mike Atherton, The Times
‘Charming, warm-hearted, addictive’ Guardian
‘Once started The Art of Fielding is a book you want to read and read. It is deliciously old-fashioned: it simply gets on with the business of creating vivid, layered characters and telling a good, engrossing story’ Daily Telegraph
‘An intricate, poised, tingling debut … leaves you longing, lingering, and a baseball convert long after the last page’ Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife, winner of the Orange Prize
‘Chad Harbach has hit a game-ender with The Art of Fielding. It’s pure fun, easy to read, as if the other Fielding had a hand in it — as if Tom Jones were about baseball and college life.’ John Irving
Steeped in American tradition, this moving debut hits a home run…What in less skilled hands might have been a light comic novel evolves into a debut of great warmth and weight… This is a charming, moving and slyly profound novel. You might even say Chad Harbach hit this one out of the park’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Every bit as good as billed. A big, beautiful blowout of a book, sure and generous, it reads like a throwback to the mid-20th century, when American literature was in its pomp… an exceptional debut’ Guardian
‘A terrifically engaging novel… you will be rewarded by a page-turning, beguiling and wonderfully warm-hearted read’. Sunday Times
‘The baseball sequences are terrific… Harbach captures precisely the strangely becalmed grace that sets sportsmen like Henry apart…Very good indeed’ Independent
Related to this topic
-
Stranded
- By: Chris Bruno, David Howard Lee, Shukri R. Abdi
- Narrated by: Taraji P. Henson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Blake Griffin, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 7 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,571
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,546
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,546
Separated by 10 years, 3,000 miles, and the unrelenting stresses of adulthood, best friends Janet and Serena plan a 40th birthday girls’ trip to reconnect. But after a massive crash, they’re the only survivors to wash ashore on an uncharted Caribbean Island. Armed with only the clothes on their backs and zero survival skills, they fight to overcome hunger, thirst, deadly wildlife—and most terrifyingly—decades of accrued resentment. Can they find their way home, or will they kill each other first?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Get ready to Laugh
- By Lasheree McFarlane on 11-08-24
By: Chris Bruno, and others
-
The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 327
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 313
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 313
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
-
The Best Man's Ghostwriter
- By: Matthew Starr
- Narrated by: Glen Powell, Nicholas Braun, Ashley Park, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,313
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,274
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,274
A bad best man’s speech can ruin a wedding. Why do we plan every detail of a perfect day and then give the groom’s idiot best friend five minutes of total power? Enter Nate (Glen Powell), a speechwriter-for-hire who helps people write incredible best man speeches. To keep the best man from embarrassing himself (and the newlyweds), Nate uses his list of don’ts: Don’t mention the exes, don’t be rated R, and don’t bum everyone out. Nate’s system never fails. That is, until he meets Dan (Nicholas Braun).
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
SO GOOD
- By Csutty on 09-23-24
By: Matthew Starr
-
Born a Crime
- Stories from a South African Childhood
- By: Trevor Noah
- Narrated by: Trevor Noah
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 215,375
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 194,845
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 193,876
In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great book and perfect narration
- By MarilynArms on 12-15-16
By: Trevor Noah
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19,018
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16,999
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16,974
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 412
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 405
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 405
Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
-
Stranded
- By: Chris Bruno, David Howard Lee, Shukri R. Abdi
- Narrated by: Taraji P. Henson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Blake Griffin, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 7 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,571
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,546
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,546
Separated by 10 years, 3,000 miles, and the unrelenting stresses of adulthood, best friends Janet and Serena plan a 40th birthday girls’ trip to reconnect. But after a massive crash, they’re the only survivors to wash ashore on an uncharted Caribbean Island. Armed with only the clothes on their backs and zero survival skills, they fight to overcome hunger, thirst, deadly wildlife—and most terrifyingly—decades of accrued resentment. Can they find their way home, or will they kill each other first?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Get ready to Laugh
- By Lasheree McFarlane on 11-08-24
By: Chris Bruno, and others
-
The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 327
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 313
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 313
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
-
The Best Man's Ghostwriter
- By: Matthew Starr
- Narrated by: Glen Powell, Nicholas Braun, Ashley Park, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,313
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,274
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,274
A bad best man’s speech can ruin a wedding. Why do we plan every detail of a perfect day and then give the groom’s idiot best friend five minutes of total power? Enter Nate (Glen Powell), a speechwriter-for-hire who helps people write incredible best man speeches. To keep the best man from embarrassing himself (and the newlyweds), Nate uses his list of don’ts: Don’t mention the exes, don’t be rated R, and don’t bum everyone out. Nate’s system never fails. That is, until he meets Dan (Nicholas Braun).
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
SO GOOD
- By Csutty on 09-23-24
By: Matthew Starr
-
Born a Crime
- Stories from a South African Childhood
- By: Trevor Noah
- Narrated by: Trevor Noah
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 215,375
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 194,845
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 193,876
In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great book and perfect narration
- By MarilynArms on 12-15-16
By: Trevor Noah
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19,018
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16,999
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16,974
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 412
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 405
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 405
Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
What listeners say about The Art of Fielding
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars
-
Story4 out of 5 stars
- Carol
- 02-29-12
Loved it!
Even if I wasn't a baseball fan, I would have loved this book. It's about talent, ambition, consequences, confidence, friendship, arrogance, doubt, and so much more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Helen
- 12-05-12
Not just for baseball fans!
As a Brit with no knowledge of Baseball I was a little sceptical about this book but having read some great reviews in the UK press I wanted to give it a try. I am a great fan of American Literature and I find that having a great narrator really makes or breaks a book for me, in this book Holter Graham is spot on for me.
I love the way Harbach is able to wind his way around life drawing us into the characters and through this thread in the baseball elements and make is so very readable/listenable. It reminds me a lot of John Irving (of whom I am big fan) and that is a great plus.
I liked the suspense Harbach uses in some key moments and didn't myself find this too contrived - don't want to add any spoilers so you'll have to listen to the book to find out how the plot unravels and the story ends.
I loved some of the names of the characters too - Henry Scrimshander, Guert Affenlight, Chef Spirodocus, Pella etc, very inventive.
All in all, a great read which I thoroughly enjoyed!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Alvin
- 10-20-12
Entertaining novel about college and baseball
If you could sum up The Art of Fielding in three words, what would they be?
Baseball is life
What does Holter Graham bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Lively characterisations. A good narration.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Yes - but that would spoil it for readers.
Any additional comments?
This is a very good novel. The characters are interesting, and the interjecting trajectories of their lives becomes fascinating. Baseball is a metaphor and backdrop for the developing drama. Throughly enjoyed listening to this.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!