W. P. Kinsella plays with both myth and fantasy in his lyrical novel, which was adapted into the enormously popular movie, Field of Dreams. It begins with the magic of a godlike voice in a cornfield, and ends with the magic of a son playing catch with the ghost of his father. In Kinsella's hands, it's all about as simple, and complex, as the object of baseball itself: coming home. Like Ring Lardner and Bernard Malamud before him, Kinsella spins baseball as backdrop and metaphor, and, like his predecessors, uses the game to tell us a little something more about who we are and what we need.


From AudioFile
Baseball conjures long, slow, hot, hazy afternoons or silken summer evenings. John Heard's narration dispels the magic and squanders Kinsella's pensive, evocative prose. D.M.L. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
"W. P. Kinsella plays with both myth and fantasy in his lyrical novel, which was adapted into the enormously popular movie, 'Field of Dreams.' It begins with the magic of a godlike voice in a cornfield, and ends with the magic of a son playing catch with the ghost of his father. In Kinsella's hands, it's all about as simple, and complex, as the object of baseball itself: coming home. Like Ring Lardner and Bernard Malamud before him, Kinsella spins baseball as backdrop and metaphor, and, like his predecessors, uses the game to tell us a little something more about who we are and what we need."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"If you build it, he will come." Them mysterious words of an Iowa baseball announcer lead Ray Kinsella to carve a baseball diamond in his cornfield in honor of his hero, the baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. This is a book "not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American," said the Philadelphia Inquirer.

SYNOPSIS

He went to Canada in the 1960's to avoid the draft. Now, back in the USA, he has a vision: build a ballpark in an Iowa cornfield "if you build it they will come." Two who do are the tragic ballplayer, Joe Jackson and the lead's father. This affecting novel was the basis of the FIELD OF DREAMS, Kevin Costner's landmark 1980's film.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile - Deborah M. Locke