excels as an analyst of the anxieties that undergird social mores.īachelder’s quirky, defiant style…achieves something fresh and surprising. Weston Cutter - Minneapolis Star TribuneĪ gem…Bachelder’s ‘football’ novel is an eerie, witty work dissecting a modern-day sacrificial ritual. Drew Nellins Smith - Los Angeles Times Book ReviewĪ hilariously sorrowful rendering of American masculinity.
Powerful, intelligent, and entertaining…Bachelder works a kind of poignant comedic magic, expertly locating and drawing out central truths about life. John Williams - New York Times Book Review
Wistful and elegantly written… The Throwback Special conjures the rewarding melancholy of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels. The Throwback Special is a moving and comic tale filled with pitch-perfect observations about manhood, marriage, middle age, and the rituals we all enact as part of being alive. Along the way, mishaps, misunderstandings, and grievances pile up, and the comforting traditions holding the group together threaten to give way.
Over the course of a weekend, the men reveal their secret hopes, fears, and passions as they choose roles, spend a long night of the soul preparing for the play, and finally enact their bizarre ritual for what may be the last time. With wit and great empathy, Chris Bachelder introduces us to Charles, a psychologist whose expertise is in high demand George, a garrulous public librarian Fat Michael, envied and despised by the others for being exquisitely fit Jeff, a recently divorced man who has become a theorist of marriage and many more. Here is the absorbing story of twenty-two men who gather every fall to painstakingly reenact what ESPN called “the most shocking play in NFL history” and the Washington Redskins dubbed the “Throwback Special”: the November 1985 play in which the Redskins’ Joe Theismann had his leg horribly broken by Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants live on Monday Night Football. "Chris Bachelder is a witty, compassionate troublemaker, and we need more like him." -George Saunders Winner of The Paris Review's Terry Southern Prize for Humor Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction
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