The Thrill of the Grass

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The combination of baseball and magic might not occur to the average person, but W.P. Kinsella is not the average person; to him, baseball is magic and is naturally the focus of magical occurrences. This collection of short stories is, as promised, about baseball; but never the mundane, play-by-play sort of account you can find in the sports pages of the daily, if that’s all you look for. Here is a world in which it is possible to imagine Leo Durocher remarking that “...The Great Gatsby is not an allegory....” Well, that has an other-worldly ring, you agree? Escape, enchantment, in fact, the thrill of the grass, are to be found in eleven stories that share the haunting quality of the author’s bestselling fairy tale, Shoeless Joe.