The Cactus League, Emily Nemens
The Cactus League, Emily Nemens
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
Club: $17.99

The Cactus League

Author: Emily Nemens

Narrator: Vivienne Leheny, Malcolm Hillgartner, Will Ropp, James Patrick Cronin, Julie McKay, Stephen Dexter, Stephen Graybill, Nicol Zanzarella, Thom Rivera

Unabridged: 9 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/04/2020


Synopsis

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' 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.

About Emily Nemens

Emily Nemens is the editor of The Paris Review. She was previously the coeditor of The Southern Review. Her work has been published in Esquire, n+1, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, and elsewhere.


Reviews

A slog, much like baseball itself, despite the fact that I grew up watching it myself. The baseball games are only peripheral to the stories, serving as an excuse for players at various stages of their careers to inhabit the same spring training world. Unlike The Art of Fielding, which made baseball......more

Goodreads review by Drew

5+ out of 5. I don't like baseball. Never found it terribly interesting to watch. So why, then, do I find it so compelling to read? Perhaps it is the structure, a hypothesis about which Robert Coover and now Emily Nemens might agree. More so than football or basketball or soccer or really any other s......more

Goodreads review by Dax

Most people are probably going to focus on Nemens’ use of the multiple POV, a structure she utilizes with much success (except for the chapter centering around the team owner with a bruised ego, as well the chapter focusing on the players’ wives). Nemens appears to have logged some time at spring tr......more


Quotes

"[A] quirky first novel…[The Cactus League] showcases a fascinating gallimaufry of characters who swirl around the edges of the springtime ritual.… Nemens finds a kind of attenuated hope along with melancholy in these sharply etched character studies that “end not with ‘out three’ but ‘out maybe.’'"
Booklist (starred review)"[An] insightful debut…each character is brought to life in convincing detail…this debut entertainingly illuminates people and problems usually overlooked in the sports pages."
Publishers Weekly"Narrated by a full cast, this audiobook follows a group of troubled souls who gather in Arizona for spring training with the Los Angeles Lions baseball team…. [T]he individual narrators' performances are strong. Each of them offers a fully realized character that has relatable flaws and ambitions on and off the field."
AudioFile Magazine