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About The Cactus League: A Novel
Product Description A Los Angeles Times Bestseller"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 ReviewA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 New Books You Should Be Picking Up First In 2020 and one of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2020An explosive, character-driven odyssey through the world of baseball from Emily Nemens, the editor of The Paris ReviewJason 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. Review "There are probably more good novels about baseball than any other sport. More bad ones, too. Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League definitely belongs in that first lineup." --Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review"[Nemens] demonstrates deep knowledge not only of baseball but also of American desperation . . . Nemens makes us care about even the worst of [her characters], a neat trick of unsentimental empathy and a testament to the power of careful, almost loving, observation . . . With her sharp eye for the details of unremarkable lives, Nemens at times reminds one of Joan Didion, and her Southwestern dreamers." --Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times"A panoramic portrait . . . Nemens’s adoration of the game is infectious, and her novel is packed with winning details." --Karen Heller, The Washington Post [The Cactus League] tempers the grandiosity inherent in baseball and implies that games have always been an important part of being human . . . Its many pleasures come from spending time with Goodyear and the others whose lives connect to the game, and from pondering how the dramas of everyday life and the imperatives of professional sports influence each other." --Josh Ostergaard, San Francisco Chronicle"As Nemens portrays the life of the team―a pitcher is in thrall to pain pills; players’ wives hold a lingerie party―it starts to seem almost an organism, each constituent part brushing against others in a larger story of competition, survival, and obsession." --The New Yorker (Briefly Noted)"[A] wise debut . . . [The Cactus League speaks] strongly to baseball's enduring vitality. The home runs and strikeouts may be background noise, but they're ubiquitous all the same. They've defined this community -- its heartbreaks, its victories, its changes. They've created a world." --David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly"[Nemens] works within the quirky register of the heart, writing about one of her great passions: baseball. She crafts a humorous and emotional novel about a star outfielder, and the coaches, fans and criminals who inhabit the same off-kilter world.
