Steve Kluger
5 Stars
This is not a book about baseball. This is the most beautiful book about found family I have ever read. It is not beautiful in the usual sense of the word. There are no long flowery descriptions or carefully worded phrases. It is beautiful in its simplicity. The epistolary format of the novel makes it easy to think that it will be hard to connect to the characters, but instead it makes them the most important part of the story. This is definitely a character driven novel, which I don’t always love, but that was what made this book so special. It defies any and all expectations that anyone has for it. I do not know anything about baseball and generally do not like books which involve sports. I am not Jewish. One of my biggest pet peeves is where people spell “You’re” wrong. Nome of these things mattered when it came to this book. This book was about what family really means, and how there is more than one meaning of love. The relationship between Charlie the famous baseball player, and Joey the kid from Brooklyn might have not made sense to an outsider, but it worked. They lifted each other up and made each other better people. I found this book at a sale at my local library for $1, which meant that not enough people were checking it out of the library for them to keep it. I picked it up on a whim then, but after reading it I honestly cannot understand how it ended up there. Books normally never make me actually laugh or cry out loud. This one did. (My parents had to ask me if I was all right least five times).The truth is that it doesn’t really matter who you are or what kind of books you like to read. Read this book. You won’t regret it.
The Bookish Flamingo 