Let’s Play Ball (a novel)

Linda Gould

iUniverse, 2010

248 pages, Fiction

2 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

A world of political and international intrigue set against the backdrop of Major League Baseball. Kidnappings, secret missions to Cuba, backroom deals between heads of governments, and the World Series. Sounds like a great recipe for a vivid, high-stakes political thriller. When a Cuban-born professional baseball player is kidnapped and shows up on Cuban television, an international crisis begins and Miranda, an American government bureaucrat is stuck in the middle.

In Let’s Play Ball, author Linda Gould has created a fictional world layered upon our existing system. We have Major League Baseball, but instead of the New York Yankees, we have the New York Broadways. Instead of the Washington Nationals, it’s the Filibusters.  Castro is mentioned, having lost power after 45 years, which would place the story in the year 2004, but the line between reality and fiction in warped.

In this world, Cuba is a communist country with a dictator named Ramirez, and the U.S. has a Bush-like president who laments tyranny while threatening shock and awe against the tiny, relatively defenseless island. But these world leaders are motivated by jealousy and hurt feelings instead of global and economic politics.

In this world we have a MLB owner who vows to rescue the Cuban people, opposing players who drink champagne in the winning team’s locker room and then accuse the world champs of cheating (providing no evidence whatsoever). There is a professional sports league filled with racism and petty squabbles – okay that’s not much of a stretch.

I struggled with a lot of the choices the author made in designing her fictional based-on-real world. One wonders if the author knows there is no Cuban Embassy on U.S. soil? And if she does, it makes sense to put one in the book to avoid explaining why. After all, this is not a book about Cuban-American politics. The idea of going to war with Cuba – real war, a shock and awe military engagement is ludicrous even in 2004. Calling Cubans terrorists is a bit of a stretch. The frequent reference to spicy Cuban food made this Cuban (yes, this reviewer is ½ Cuban) wonder if the author has ever had Cuban cuisine (Cuban food is not spicy!) or was simply confusing Cuban food with Mexican food (yes, there is a big difference!).

She refers to small ball as “little ball” but we don’t know if this is accidental, or part of her alternate reality. And what is Oprah Winfrey doing in the middle of all this??

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the author gives us no character to root for – no one we can identify with. The protagonist, Miranda, cheats on her husband and we’re supposed to like her. She’s emotional, sobbing and wanting to be loved – but pregnant by another man. Her husband is cheating on her too – and the woman he’s cheating with? She’s cheating! Miranda is a dishonest person who routinely spies on her husband by reading his email, and gets aroused at the sight of her sister’s husband. It’s impossible to cheer for a character like that.

The author creates such a tenuous web of gossip, unfaithfulness, conspiracy, politics and baseball that you need Glenn Beck to draw it all out on a chalkboard. So many conspiracy theories are tossed around that it’s hard to remember what is really going on.  The flaw is that we’re never in the middle of the action – we are constantly relying on second-hand rumor and speculation from dishonest characters – we never actually see any of these deals go down.

It becomes a book about pregnancy, fidelity and trust, with more hormones than intrigue. A bitter tone, with constant bickering centering around the fate of a self-proclaimed “horny bastard” who hates Spics. What begin as a Clancy story becomes more like Days of Our Lives. What starts out as a high-stakes political thriller becomes nothing more than two sisters passing rumors and gossip.

The biggest flaw is that the book does not feel finished. It ends decisively, but it feels like a second draft. Not polished.  It needs a fact check, and a chance to flush out the most interesting parts of the story: the kidnappings, the conspiracy, the secret mission…we need to see these things! We’re told later, after the fact. Through rumor and speculation. A classic mistake of telling vs. showing.

Imagine a movie where Luke Skywalker tells Yoda about everything that happened on the Death Star. Wouldn’t it be more exciting to actually see those events unfold? To experience them for yourself? That’s what’s lacking.

I struggled with the score 2 ½ stars feels generous – but Gould has fine command of the language. She writes well but in this case, failed to tell a compelling story.

Let’s Play Ball is available from Amazon.

Reviewed by Mark McGinty, October 2010.

The Rock Star’s Homecoming

Linda Gould

iUniverse, 2009

260 pages, Fiction

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Some have described the college campus as a microcosm of American pop culture. The values of a typical college student often mirror—and sometimes predate—the narcissistic and shallow values of society at large. Star athletes are revered as gods, and beauty queens are worshiped and elevated, only to be torn down by the same people who exalted them in the first place. Men and women struggle to connect, form relationships, marry or break up. Surrounding all the fame and romance are the masses, watching from the sidelines and often fighting for the front row, to root for their heroes and cheer the fall of their adversaries.

Linda Gould’s The Rock Star’s Homecoming is a cynical but accurate story of a group of scheming and vulnerable college girls awaiting the return of their college’s homegrown rock band. As this politically charged campus anticipates a concert by the successful rock band the Sunburst, we enter a petty world of mistrust, gossip and cynicism where it’s normal to spend 75 minutes trashing your “friend.” I wish the world wasn’t like this, but it is. While it is hard to avoid the gossip and lust for fame that fuels our culture, at times The Rock Star’s Homecoming goes too far in its pettiness:  it’s hard to imagine a football team failing to protect their star player during the homecoming game simply because they are jealous of his fame and future stardom.

The tone is confrontational and filled with hostility, and the characters clearly never learned the lessons of “Revenge of the Nerds” or “Can’t Buy Me Love…” that it doesn’t matter who you’re friends with, or to which social circle you belong. All that matters is that we’re in this together. Gould throws all platitudes aside and creates a world where everyone is out for themselves. This makes it hard to root for anyone, except for Imogene, a seemingly innocent student who is focused on writing her thesis on rock and folk music, using the Sunburst as her study.

Sunburst must be the most disorganized band ever and it’s a wonder how they ever got together in the first place. The end concert is chaotic. Their clumsy starts and stops are speckled with intermittent rambling by the band’s front man, who insults his audience and invokes an image of Jim Morrison’s drunken and buffoonish antics.

The story is short on character development simply because there are too many of them. There are even several characters that do not deserve a name and are referred to as “nondescripts.” They serve as a chorus, the voice of the people, which makes sense given the book’s commentary on pop culture (in a world of Academy Awards parties and celebrity gossip mags, aren’t we all nondescripts?). But at times these nameless girls are used to express dialogue when no other major character is there to say what needs to be said – and if that’s the case, why say it at all?

It’s an interesting campus story and Gould is a fine writer. There were many surprises, especially in the second half, and I was constantly wondering what would happen next. What does it say about our culture when a book with such petty squabbles made me nod and shake my head, knowing that Gould’s story of narcissism and mistrust was accurate and true to life? It made me wonder if we really are that bad…

Strengths: well-written prose, unpredictable story, filled with conflict, commentary on pop culture

Opportunities: characters crowd each other out and are hard to root for

Will appeal to: chicklit readers, college students

The Rock Star’s Homecoming is available on amazon.

Reviewed by Mark McGinty, August 2009