Everything they're saying about this book is true. I couldn't put it down. First, Harbach knows how to tell a story. I want to make a Franzen comparison, because this book gave me the same type of satisfying "ahhh" feeling I have when reading him, but he is not Franzen. Sometimes reading Franzen is like taking a vitamin. You know it's good for you, but sometimes it's a little bitter going down. Not so, with this book. His writing is lovely, without being highbrow. If you are a baseball fan, you will be mesmerized, because he writes about baseball with a poetic and philsophical tone, yet with an everyperson appeal to it. All of the characters felt fully realized. By twenty pages in, you cared about everyone you encountered. Henry and Schwartz's relationship was fascinating. You were rooting for them to work it out as much if not more than you would root for a romantic couple. At first look you might want to label their relationship a "bromance" in the pop culture parlance, but you'd be wrong. Their relationship seemed much more essential, was filled with much more gravitas than the word bromance would imply. I'd even say there isn't yet a word that adequately describes the kind of love and affection that Mike and Henry had for each other. Pella calls Schwartz out on it, in a half-joking-half-jealous-but-100% convinced-of-its-truth way. And it's not that you imagine that their realtionship has any kind of homo-erotic tension, because it doesn't. You need only to contrast the relationship between Owen and Affenlight and Henry and Schwartz to see that love between two people (I want to say to men but even writing that fells like I am giving the wrong impression of the book, which just goes to show, I guess, how hard it is to pin down and names complex, complicated emotions) can take any number of forms.

There were images that made me put the book down and think on them awhile, there were uncomfortable moments where my heart wanted to break for Henry, there were many, many moments, in fact. The sole main female character in the book was handled well and believeably. My one and only complaint was that perhaps all the characters were a bit idealized, no one had any egregious flaws. An entire baseball team didn't flinch in having an "out" gay man on their team, Mike's addiction to pain pills is glossed over, even the affair of a 60 year old man with a gay teenager feels "right". And speaking of Owen, good Lord, he was Oscar Wilde in a baseball cap. But I think it is simply that kind of book. Harbach created characters and a story that makes you believe. Definitely in my top five books this year.